


Noli Me Tangere

by Knight_Song



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Dragon Age Kink Meme, F/M, Femdom, Light Dom/sub, Lyrium Withdrawal, Mages and Templars, Mpreg, Multi, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Pegging, Recovery, Sex Toys, Slow Burn, Submissive Cullen, Yeah you read that right, actually dealing with trauma, and you read that one right too, don't worry - the mpreg is a long way off, use of magic during sex, will be a pretty significant aspect of this fic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-04-13
Updated: 2017-04-10
Packaged: 2018-03-22 15:08:06
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 22
Words: 196,270
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3733423
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Knight_Song/pseuds/Knight_Song
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“You've come willingly into the den of a mage, and a place where my power is strongest.” The Inquisitor smiles, a gesture meant with the utmost gentleness. Pointedly, she keeps her teeth behind her lips. “I had thought you might still prefer some manner of caution in my company.”</p><p>“No.” Cullen laughs. “Whatever caution I hold in your company, Inquisitor, it is not because you are a mage.” He watches her face like a hawk circling a wide field, its eyes ever on the little heartbeat tucked close to the earth. If he must spend the next few months convincing her that he is not the man she read about in Varric's book, tis a little price to pay.</p><p>---------------------------------------------</p><p>This is a fill from the Dragon Age Kinkmeme, and it's here for the sole reason that it's gotten too long for comfortable reading on LJ.</p><p>Original Prompt: Through magical ~shenanigans~ Cullen becomes pregnant with the Quiz's child. Quiz can be male or female, and the fic can be as cracky or as serious as you please.</p><p>+Quiz is Trevelyan or Adaar<br/>++++++Quiz is female </p><p>The tags do not lie.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Whoso list to hunt, I know where is an hind,

**Author's Note:**

> The shenanigans are a long way off because I'm a terrible person and I had to start at the beginning, and because if I'm going to write mpreg then it's going to have to be as realistic as possible. The characters need to get to a place where the prompt would actually be something they would consider accepting, and this awful monster of a fic is my attempt at creating a scenario wherein everything in the tags makes sense and the choices therein are somewhat logical given the characters as presented. 
> 
> I'm not entirely sure if I'll succeed, but I'm sure as shit gonna try.

Haven is bitterly cold, though the sun has climbed high, and the encampment shines with that particular brilliance belonging only to the months of winter. The whiteness of it bites at him, pushes against his eyes even as he struggles to draw supply routes over Josephine's elegant, thickly inked correspondence routes. 

Perhaps he shouldn't have bothered with the charcoal. 

He taps his foot against the leg of the wooden table and shrugs deeper into the fur braced round his neck: if he had aught else to do but bark at pink-faced recruits, perhaps he'd be less inclined to morose thoughts. As it stands, he'll chew at this discord between himself and the Herald till his mouth is bloody – twist himself into knots until he can't manage another stifling, early morning meeting trapped in that windowless burrow they've all got the stones to call a war-room.

There is a great deal of pain sewn up together with his bitter thoughts, for if honesty prevails, and he stops for a moment to string all the blunders together, he knows precisely why the Herald looks at him with all the warmth of a creeping winter frost. 

The Herald never makes an effort to speak to him, at least not unless driven by necessity. She certainly doesn't touch him, not like she touches the others. To the rest of the War Council she is a font of wild laughter and careless, generously given affection. A grasp of hands, a kiss on the cheek in greeting – something Josephine seeks out with a tenacious efficiency every morning they gather round the little table – and a hug that looks strong enough to crack bones. 

She seems to enjoy having conversations by murmuring into ears, head low and her red-bow mouth bent towards eager listeners.

And always smiles: rough, generous smiles wide enough to split her face with a hearty, golden-edged delight. 

Her Worship, Lady Trevelyan, ambles around Haven like the great black bear she resembles, all long limbs and broad shoulders knocking into friends and soldiers alike with a bruising, bright simplicity. At all hours anyone can hear her voice echoing through Haven: a rich, drawling lilt that summons allies and friends alike to devotion, to a freely, fiercely given adoration she earns from nearly all who spend time in her esteemed presence.

_“Don't worry too much Curly, we're all a little in love with her right now," Varric had laughed, listing ever so slightly on his stool at the bar. “She's fuckin' magnificent, and if you told her so, she'd look at you as if you'd just kissed a nug on the mouth and proclaimed it the fairest Lady at the Gran Tourney. Doesn't care one bit about any of this Herald nonsense. If you asked her what she wanted to do, she'd tell you straight up 'Varric, my friend, I'd like to go home. Back to my castell and my sheep and my people, and spend the rest of my years in peace. No more of this Chosen One horseshit.' That's what she'd say, and she'd mean it.”_

Perhaps it was that awkward night spent hunched over a muddy tasting ale with the dwarf who'd seen him at his worst – drowning under the madness of the City of Chains and his own ugly prejudices – that made Cullen take note of just how little he knew of the Herald. Always, he notices just how unflinching, how doggedly reserved she remained in his company. Often it seemed to him as if the longer she spent in his presence the more she began to resemble a finely carven icon, a great stone statue eternally unmoved by the offerings laid at its feet.

He remembers, with a bitter tasting clarity, that absurd conversation with Varric being the first time he'd honestly thought the Herald might genuinely hate him – if not hate, than perhaps a strong dislike. Very strong. He's not proud of it, but he might have sulked into his ale until Varric dragged him off the bench and returned him to his chilly quarters with a gentle, laughing admonishment to 'just talk to the woman, already. Awfully sad thing, Curly, to see a grown man cry into his drink when he thinks no one's looking.'

The Herald gives out her hands and her laughter and her joys to her companions with such an easy, unflinching generosity that it stings something fiercely to have that same enthusiasm absent in his regard.

When she speaks to Leliana it is with an obvious, steadfast respect. An understanding built between two people inured to the weight of secrets, and an awareness of the price, both in blood and mind, to be exacted for their fervent guarding. And Leliana respects her in turn. Though Cullen is willing to admit that part of the rapport between the two women is most likely because the Herald enjoys the ravens, and Leliana's pet nugs, as much as Leliana does. 

With Josephine there is a bubbling affection, and always the Herald's odd, spark-to-tinder laughter. Gentle kisses on soft looking hands or upturned palms in place of formal greetings, and hours whittled away in the Antivan noblewoman's office with only the tinkling of fine china and murmurs of gentle conversation to speak of what goes on behind that closed door. He's come to hate the sight of Josephine's closed door. Hates it as if the door itself were a personal insult to him.

In the presence of her companions the Herald is much the same, save for Dorian. Dorian, it seems, has a much greater portion of the Herald's time, affection and trust than any other soul in Haven. Perhaps because they are both mages, or both the first-born scions of old Houses, or simply because Dorian Pavus is a handsome man who doesn't have to cart around ten years of utterly ruinous choices, and the knowledge that a goodly number of people would merrily line up to watch him hang for the crimes he committed while under the Order's banners, all those years ago in the Circles. 

In the company of all her chosen companions and advisors, the Herald is a boisterous, high-spirited woman who takes especial pleasure in the closeness of her relationships. 

He is the only exception.

In his presence she wears a stifling, iron-boned caution. Even though he is amassing in her name an army fit to sweep away half the mighty empires of Thedas should she but ask it of him, she holds him distant. Wears no smile in his company. Always it is a cold, implacable reservation that cuts up her words to him into little, carefully divided pieces – as if coming any closer, or speaking aught but the barest of necessities will result in sudden violence.

This knowledge eats at him with a sharpness he does not believe he will have the courage to speak aloud. At least, that is what he believes of himself in this moment. 

The next is another matter entirely. 

In an hour or so he'll think to blame the cold, or blame the dragging boredom that has left him muddled and sore. Perhaps, if he's feeling particularly hurtful towards himself, he'll blame the lyrium, or lack thereof, for giving him the courage he needs to call out to her as she saunters by, her presence heard more by the jingle of her fine sword making merry, familiar music at her hip than the cries of greeting ringing out in the training yard.

“Herald!” 

Andraste preserve him. 

Perhaps it is the thick, blindingly white fleece wrapped round her powerful shoulders working in tandem with the heavy, black-banner braids of her hair, but she always seems to hold herself as still and tall as a stone tower. The force of her presence, the searing crackled of her magic, always pushes a sharp stone down his throat. 

He'll not think of those supple leather boots that climb up her legs well past her knees. Never mind how the arrow of flesh exposed by the open collar of her jerkin only serves to frame the sweep of her throat and neck; the wind has chapped her honey brown skin red, and he cannot quite drag his eyes away speedily enough to even make a show of courtly decorum. 

With her crooked smile firmly in place it only serves to heighten her rough, rakish charm, and he finds it is _difficult_ to order his thoughts well enough to pick up their threads without stuttering like some awkward little squire in oversized armour. 

She must know what that sharp-toothed leer does to him, to others, to anyone who spends not ten minutes in her company. Surely, she must be at least _somewhat_ aware? 

“Commander?” She drawls, swinging her frame round to move towards the man; Maker give her the strength to be gentle-tongued. The Templar has a wild look about him, as if he's been gripping a fistful of frayed rope for just long enough to have reached desperation. She may not care to learn whatever ails him, for it is not her business, but the thought of the man suffering some quiet malady is less welcome that it should be. Given the circumstances. Whatever he is, whatever he thinks of her, the man is a capable soldier, and an excellent tactician; his loss would serve no-one. 

“You look like a man harassed. Have the apprentices been wandering through the training yard? I made it very clear to the Grand Enchanter that you would not appreciate mages,” she pauses, something bitter staining her tongue, “running amok unsupervised.” Her voice rolls in like a great wave, even through the clamour of soldiers and the low, rhythmic music of the blacksmiths at their work. “I know how you feel about such things.” 

“No,” Cullen counters, pinching the bridge of his nose with a sigh, “I do not think you do, Herald.”

“Oh?” She laughs, and the sound is as cutting as the cold edge of a knife.

“You risked your life to close the Breach.” And as if unbidden, his arm sweeps out, gestures to the sky above their heads and the ugly knot laid against sprawling blue. “As did the mages you recruited. I know I have not given you reason to believe that I do not distrust mages, our early conversations will attest to that, but,” a pause invades, stops his tongue, “I am not here to – I am not here to be what I was in Kirkwall. And nor will any other former Templar under my command. The little ones are welcome to go where they please, and I trust that with the guidance of yourself and the Grand Enchanter, the mages under the Inquisition's care are safe and well looked after. I wish, I would prefer. Can we not be civil, at least?” Cullen asks, careful to weed out his hurt at the roots, or at least scrape it clean out of his voice with an unfelt efficiency. 

_Must you hide that fine smile away every time you speak to me?_ He wonders sourly, swallowing down his disappointment like a bitter tonic. 

_You are a brave man, Cullen, when the moment calls for it, do try not to foul this up._ Strangely enough, the sharpest voice in his head always sounds ever so slightly like his sister. He should endeavour to listen to her. 

“I am aware you care little for my company, but I had hoped we could at least attempt something approaching friendship.” 

The Herald's noise of protest snaps him out of his tangled thoughts, and he dares a glance in her direction. If he could be anything other than half terrified she'll throw him out of Haven's sprawling camp for his boldness, he would laugh: the Herald's face is drawn, wan even under the bright noonday sun, and her confusion is so deep she looks as if he's just asked her to put a knife to a dear friend's throat. As if he's just put a knife to her throat.

“I. Well, Commander, I.” She breathes, bewilderment thick on her tongue. “I had not thought.” A grimace sharp enough to look like a wound mars her handsome face, and her hand drops from the gilt pommel of her sword as if burnt. “It would appear I owe you an apology.”

“What?” Cullen barks, his singular exclamation ringing out in the quiet training grounds. “No. Wait, what? I beg your pardon, my lady?”

“You are a Templar.”

Cullen flinches, not quite fast enough to smother his sudden rush of _hurt_ at being called by that title. Again. Of course. How could he think a woman such as the Herald might see him as anything other than a man pretending to be something more than what fifteen years of oaths have made him? 

She is a mage, after all. 

Worse.

An apostate.

A hedge-mage.

“Ah,” the Herald demurs, regret washing out the steel in her grey eyes. “That was most unkind of me. Forgive me, Commander, it would appear I have been rather awful towards you. Tis not in my nature to be so rough with those who would be friends.”

“I am well aware of that, Herald. Your affectionate nature is now quite legendary amongst your companions.” Immediately he regrets his words, wishes he could snatch them back; somehow dispel the creeping flush that is working its way up his neck with every passing moment.

“Commander,” she continues, squaring her shoulders, “please allow me to apologize. I truly believed keeping my distance from your company was in your best interests.”

“Maker's Breath, why in the Void would you think that, my lady?” He is, in absolute honesty, utterly bewildered by her words.

“I am a mage.” She spreads her hands, long, gloved fingers grasping at the air. “Not even one of those nicely trained mages who actually gives a copper about being temperate in the company of non-magic wielders.” 

There is a an ugly breed of sorrow in her voice the likes of which he's never heard before, and its sourness sends a shiver tearing down his spine. 

“I am aware that I frighten people, that my magic frightens many in and around Haven. I accept that. I thought,” she sighs, a sharp whistle passing through wolfish teeth, and begins to toss an apple between her hands in quick, nervous motions, “I was told...” 

Cullen waits, a prickling barb of fear stuck roughly between his ribs.

Her eyes firmly on the wide bowl of the sky, the Herald speaks in a clipped, cautious tone: “Seeker Cassandra informed me that you have a difficult history with mages.”

Cullen finds his right hand has crept up to rub the back of neck; there is a sharp, burning weight in the pit of his stomach, and for a moment he thinks he might vomit on the Herald's fine boots.

“I may loathe the Circles with all my heart,” she hisses, fire and outrage high on her tongue, “but I am no naive, highborn Lady who has been kept away from the cruelties of this world. Whatever pain lives in your past, that is yours to keep as you will. I will not pry. You have a right observe your own comfort first, Commander. There's no ill will in that.”

Oddly, dizzyingly, he finds there is space in the tightness of his chest to breathe. One little breath after another. Her eyes are very quiet now, their hard light turned to an abiding, gentle patience. 

“Hedge mages, apostates, whatever the Chantry deigns to call us, are not held in high regard by Templars. I thought it was a kindness, not forcing you to endure the noisy company of a woman who makes a mockery of the vows you hold. Once held.” She adds lamely, shrugging those fine, broad shoulders of hers in some poorly shaped apology. “And I assumed my presence would upset you, somehow. Also, there were many unpleasant words and accusations between us when I chose to go to Redcliffe.” 

Cullen remembers those words quite well:

_I would not go to the Templars unless Andraste herself descended from on high and commanded me to do so, on pain of death. I will not put my trust in an Order that has presided over the slaughter of no less than three Circles in the past twenty years! I will not put myself, or any mage who has sought the protection of the Inquisition, within their reach, ever again._

_Lady Trevelyan, see reason!_

_Reason? What reason is there amongst men and women who put their swords to children's throats, and then burn their own prison to the ground to cover over the shame? As if the Maker would not know what sins were committed in His name if He could not have bodies for the accounting._

_What? Templars do not kill children, Herald._

_The Circle in Ostwick was annulled. The Knight-Commander invoked the Rite. I had come down from Montjuïc in the north, only in Ostwick proper by chance. Saw the smoke from the courtyard tower of my family's city apartments. I was much too late to save anyone, but six apprentices had managed to smuggle the remaining little ones into the dining hall, and barricade themselves in. I think they hoped the smoke would take them before the Templars did. Sixteen mages survived. Ten children with no more than eleven summers between them, and those very desperate junior apprentices. The oldest had no more than nineteen summers to his name. Not a handful of hours before, Ostwick was home to one hundred and thirty six mages._

_So that is why your family sent you to the Conclave. To get you away from the remains of the Order in Ostwick. How exceedingly dangerous._

_I did not have time to think better of my actions, Leliana. I stumbled out of that tower carrying as many of the smaller children as I could. Some of the apprentices were so exhausted, so wounded, I had to go back for them as well. By that time, some of the citizens had gathered up enough courage to help, but in the end I had to make paths for them through the fire, and so they learned what I was. What I am._

_So no, Commander, I will not go to the Templars for aid._

_No true templar would ever commit such vile acts! To put innocents to the slaughter is a breach of everything the Order stands for. Do not condemn my brothers and sisters because of the actions of a few. Do not make this choice out of anger. Out of a desire for revenge. That is beneath you, Herald._

_And what would you know of me, to speak so? I should have known better than to air the crimes committed against my kind in the presence of a Templar._

_I am not a Templar. No soldier under the Inquisition's banner is a Templar._

_So you say. But if it speaks like a Templar, if it moves like a Templar, if it thinks like a Templar – I find, more often than not, that it is a Templar._

_And what of the horrors mages visit on Templars, Herald? Are we to dismiss those actions too?_

_What happens to a dog when its master beats it, Commander?_

_I fail to see what this has to do with the matter at hand, Lady Trevelyan._

_The dog learns to be afraid. The dog does not learn kindness. It never receives it, so why would it be looked for in return? So when the dog will not be broken any further, it makes a choice, and bites back._

_Then you drive your sword through the beast, because it could not have been a very good dog, or it would not have bit the hand that fed it, sheltered it, gave it a place to rest. You may say 'but the dog had a choice, it chose poorly, that is all', but I say this: only the hand had a choice. The dog's choice, well, that was only an illusion._

“Bugger.” She grouses, tugging at the odd braids hanging down the side of her face; the gold twine she uses to keep her hair tied up flashes in the sunlight like bright coins against a black sea. “I've been an ass. Hardly matters that it's been unintentional.”

Cullen cannot help but wonder what all that fine, thick hair would be like unbound. Would it be cold and soft as silk? Or warm and thick, with the scent of woodsmoke laced through? 

Maker's Blood, but these aren't the sort of thoughts he should entertain towards a highborn lady, most especially one who is also a mage. A mage who has just shown him more understanding than most who have called themselves his friends. To receive such an apology, and so quickly, wholly and unreservedly – well, he can hardly believe it. He had not asked for one, had not been searching one out. Why should a woman who has spent her whole life hiding who she is, apologize to a man who has done enough wrong to have others speak his name like a curse? A man whose Order is the root and river of her hiding away.

How does he tell her so, and yet shield himself against the pity that will sweep through her face? If he cannot have her affection, he will not take _that_ in its place. 

An awkward silence descends like a clap of thunder; Cullen feels set adrift in a sudden storm, furiously tearing through the few recollections of his time spent in her presence that might have led the Inquisitor to believe such nonsense about him. Despite their harsh words on the eve of her choice for Redcliffe over Therinfal Redoubt, he had thought he'd managed to cut out the old, bone deep habits of a life shaped by the Order and its strictures with something resembling savage efficiency. 

He searches, and is rewarded, or perhaps rewarded is the wrong word entirely, with his blunder: the memory of that first genuine meeting round the war-table. Cassandra had dragged the Herald in with rope burns still fresh upon her wrists, and he'd clapped a hand over the sword at his side the moment her magic had washed over his skin. He might even have stepped away, calculating the distance he'd need to put between them if she chose to attack.

One can call themselves a dragon, or a halla, or the Empress of Orlais, but actions are a louder song than words. 

_Cullen, you ignorant fool_ , he thinks. 

“Commander, might I ask – what gave me away?”

“You never touch me.” The words fly out of his mouth before he can snap his teeth over their traitorous, rather naked honesty. 

The Herald does an admirable impression of a woman choking on her own tongue. 

Cullen wishes desperately, prays like a man prostrate before the stones of the Maker's altar, for the earth to open up and swallow him whole.

“I, I mean simply that you are so f-friendly with the other members of your council. I thought per-perhaps I had done something to earn your ire. I have,” he pauses, making a great effort to pluck the thorns from his mouth, “I have worked hard to be better than the man I used to be. Mages are not my enemy. Perhaps I have not been vocal enough in that regard, and for that mistake I apologize. Above all else, please understand that I do not see you thusly.”

At this, a smile blooms on the Herald's face. “Templar no more, Commander?”

“No. Never again.” His cheeks are aflame, and that damnable stutter has returned, but at least she is not looking at him as if he has sprouted two heads and begun to shout tired old lines about mages and their tendency to bring chaos and destruction with the snap of their fingers.

Progress, or something that might called be its distant cousin.

Her laughter rings out, sudden and clean as a summer's rain: a rich, good as black earth sound that settles under his skin with disturbing ease. Tucking her half eaten apple into a pocket, the Herald leans close, closer than she's ever been wont to do before. 

Cullen can almost taste the apple on her breath. 

“Commander, are you entirely sure you wish for me to touch you? That is a dangerous thing to ask of me. Who knows what liberties I shall take with you, now that you've given me leave to do so.”

Cullen sucks in a great breath, his lungs seizing round the heat seeping out of her body; he's never noticed just how much taller she is when stood beside him. The top of his head only just brushes beneath her chin. She smells of oranges and campfire smoke. Leather and salt.

_Andraste preserve me_ , he pleads; his thoughts have fallen to pieces, and for the first time in many long months he cannot manage the will to crush them back together.

“Have you given me leave to do so?”

“Yes.” The affirmation falls off the tip of his tongue with a hush that speaks of need. Worse still, he knows he should be ashamed, would have been ashamed aught but a handful of years ago. But that man is dead and buried, and he'll no more be permitted to drag his poison through Cullen's life as if it were a cudgel meant to bludgeon flat any happiness that might be scraped together.

When he looks up at the Inquisitor, Cullen watches something that might be hunger pass swiftly over her proud, knife-sharp face. But whatever it is, it is gone with such speed it leaves him reeling, quietly at a loss. Leaves him trembling and unsure, and feeling as if knocked about the head by a great, bloody-minded bear. 

Perhaps it has never been hate. Perhaps it is something else entirely. 

He's not sure which thought is more terrifying. 

Perhaps he's only being a fool, searching for the impossible in a woman who will no doubt give such passion to someone far more deserving. Someone who is far less a wreck of a man than he is. 

The bell that signals noonday meal rings out, and suddenly her hand is on his elbow; her fingers are as strong as iron even through the thick leather between the joints of his armour. Her quiet smile is a gentle bulwark against his refusal.

“Come then, Commander, if it pleases you to do so. I find a shared meal is often a good way to start. Or should I say, start again?”

He's not sure who laughs first, but the sound is intolerably bright. Somewhere in the mess of his chest, something red and soft in him hurts, and he is glad for the sharpness. 

Glad for this, whatever it might be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter titles are taken from Thomas Wyatt's Whoso list to hunt.
> 
> That sonnet is essentially the inspiration for this fic.
> 
> Except Cullen is the hind.
> 
> And I'm a terrible person.


	2. But as for me, hélas, I may no more

~ * ~ 

Evening falls softly – a great ribbon of pink and orange unfurling over the towering spines at Haven's back – and Cullen stares up at the sky, at the scar cradled in the burnished colours of night, and cannot quite wipe the smile from his mouth. The Breach has been closed for three days now, and pilgrims and soldiers alike are still celebrating with an infectious abandon. 

“It is has been a long time since anyone so gathered here had good cause to greet evening with a smile, Commander.”

Cullen spins around, nearly tripping in his rush to meet the voice that has stoked this sudden fire in his belly. She's dressed much the same as always: long tunic, thick cloak, bear and hart firmly clapped over her heart. Sword and boots making merry music all their own. And that wonderful, crooked smile.

Too much; too far. 

He should not think as he does.

“Feels good does it not? To see the work of your Inquisition come to fruition.”

“Herald, you speak as if it was not your work as well.”

She holds up her hand, mark hidden by her glove. “This is what closed the Breach. Whatever role I played, it can be nothing more than the work of a channel. Anyone would have served.” What she does not say to him, to this strange man so full of warring contradictions, and in possession of such a choking sadness she scarcely knows how he functions with ease each day, is this: _'my use is spent. I played no particular part, and soon enough, I will go home'._ She does not think he would like to hear that from her, most especially now that they've managed some sort of odd understanding between them. There is a chance he'll be insulted she wishes to leave the Inquisition so quickly, and she would prefer to depart in warm company.

But she wants to go home. She wants nothing more than that: to go home.

Home to the walled city, to the port, to the sea and the mountains and the great, wide plains dotted with her sheep. Back to her cousin and her uncle; to her mother, and her father, and her little siblings.

Home.

“I do not believe that. You kept the mages safe, kept our people safe, and you took all that power – turned it against the Breach. Whatever the Inquisition must still accomplish, you will be of great help.”

The Herald falls silent, folding her hands behind her back as if to steady herself; on her face is a thin, quiet smile, touched at the edges with the ghost of something sharp.

“Commander, I know this may be cold comfort to you, but wish for you to understand: I regret my harsh words to you in regards to the Templars. It is.” She stops to pull her shoulders tight, as if she is bracing against a great tide. “It is hard for me to get rid of my fear, sometimes. I may not have been raised in a Circle, but I have spent much of my life being terrified of discovery. I have very few memories of the days before my greatest fear became being dragged away and locked up for what I am. Because of that,” a pause invades, sits awkwardly on her fine tongue with shocking weight, and she rubs her gloved hands down her face as if to peel something away, “I was cruel, and my words were unjust. I am sorry for them.”

Cullen opens his mouth, and for a moment he truly wishes that the words he cannot form quickly enough would simply spring from his chest with no help from his tongue. She should not be so kind. And she does not know the truth; she knows nothing of Kirkwall, or the day he met a girl he cared for very much, and then called her a monster of the highest order. Worse is when he remembers what he felt her blame had been, her fault in his eyes: for no other reason than being as the Maker made her. 

Nothing more, and nothing less.

Cullen is so very tired of being reminded, daily, of just how much Uldred has twisted him. Just how much has been taken from him. Time and age have returned not a third of what he feels he's lost, and the high-climbing walls he hides behind have not softened. Nothing has grown in the place where his fear had rooted deep, and no matter how he digs, how he tries, the seeds remain. 

“Fear makes animals of us all, does it not?” 

Her smile is rueful, and in the distance there is the clamour of bells.

~ * ~

Skyhold is awash in long scraps of wool and silk and ribbons dyed in every colour imaginable, revelers calling out to one another in voices as clear and light as chantry bells shivering in the blue of early dawn. There are a half a dozen roaring fires, and everywhere is the noise of people going about the business of being _alive_.

Cullen can scarcely believe their luck. He cannot believe how many survived, how many have chosen to remain, how many more have joined in the fortnight since Haven was buried beneath the snow. Even as he stands at the first of the stone steps up to the main hall – watching as civilians tie ribbons round the door handles, their bright yellow colour matching the banner only just hung between the great, wide windows at the back of the hall – he cannot quite allow himself to feel the joy staining his lips with a wide, bruising smile.

Foolishly, he had thought their separation in Haven would have signaled the end of whatever tenuous accord had sprung up like new, green shoots between himself and Lady Trevelyan. These past two weeks of ever so fortuitous meetings have taught him the ignorance of his assumptions about her. 

The outstretched hand may be hesitant, but it is not out of spite, nor dislike, nor mistrust. She brings him too many little 'gifts' to allow him to continue to delude himself into thinking she cares not a wit for his health, or his company. Always, she brings whatever seems to be in her hands: grapes from Tevinter, red and sweet as Orlesian sugar, or apples from the Wilds. Once she brought him a little parcel of candied almonds from Rivain, and a tin of Antivan cherries. 

He cannot imagine the pretty coin those cherries had cost her.

Best yet has been her habit of bringing him a pot of mint and honey tea in a roughly made, chipped teapot she'd told him she'd carted with her all the many long miles from her home: a name-day gift from her very young brother, Alexandre, made by the boy's own hands.

She'd left him the cup: a dark, forrest green colour, hand shaped and decorated with curling vines and little, roughly textured pomegranates etched in time-worn gold.

That one is still his favourite. 

Perhaps it is the fact that Skyhold is still mostly in ruins, or that she simply is truly and genuinely just that affectionate with all her companions, but early morning councils in the echoing war room are now not quite so fractious as they were in Haven. 

Her bleary, rising with the sun greetings are certainly warmer. 

As are the smiles she gives him.  
And the little, feather light touches she gives him.  
And the laughter. 

There is nothing but friendship between himself and the Herald. Or so he tells himself. He shall simply have to content himself with idle thoughts, just as before. After all, in Ferelden, he nursed his affections only in the safety of his dreams, and he had survived as well as any might have hoped to.

At least that's what he reminds himself when he finds himself consumed by fantasies of the Herald. Fantasies a man of his age and station should know better than to indulge in. Alas, but there is little sense in his head when it comes to _her_. 

Late in the evening, or while hunched over his desk, he weaves imaginings that involve her fine, long-fingered hands, her quicksilver mouth, her magnificent legs, and the long, black ribbon of her hair. 

Often Cullen wonders what all that fine hair would feel like against his skin, its silk slipping between his fingers. Would her hands be callused? Would her palms scrape roughly over his shoulders, rub the delicate skin around his wrists raw as she held them above his head? 

He wonders what her taller frame would feel like pressed against his own, and if she would match his weight with hers. Would she be so inclined to take command of him as easily as she calls her magic to her hands? Is her naked frame as finely, powerfully crafted a weapon as her martial skill suggests?

Would she think his desires beneath her? 

Would she be disgusted to know only last week, when she leaned over him to knock a golden pawn into position over some minor fort in South Reach, that he'd nearly bitten his tongue in two to keep some awful, needy noise in his mouth? That he has thought, in great detail, of how easily she could wrap her arms round his waist and bend him over the great table beneath them – with not a word of complaint from his mouth.

The Void will take him before he tells her as much.

Perhaps that is why he's allowed himself to wander to the tavern, despite the report on the desperate state of the armoury waiting for him in his newly swept and perpetually draughty office. Or mayhap it is just that it is snowing, and there is a hole in his ceiling he hasn't the heart to ask one of the four masons the Inquisition has in their service to fix, though perhaps he should attend to it before he's buried under a mountain of stone and ice. 

The tavern door bursts open and a pair of soldiers stagger out singing the filthiest rendition of Sweet Lady, Fair that Cullen has ever heard, and he doesn't have the desire to keep himself from the warm, golden light spilling out onto the frozen earth. Even from outside he can smell the meat roasting away, and the pungent bite of cider and ale right alongside the bristle of freshly cut and stripped wood.

He steps inside, heat and noise pressing against his chest with a welcome force, and the wealth of voices rising up in greeting holds fast the grin on his face. 

Her voice is loudest of all.

“Commander!” She laughs, cheeks red and eyes steel-bright. “You are just in time for the story. Sit, and do me the honour of listening to the most embarrassing moment of my youth. I lost a bet.” 

“You lost a bet, Herald? Ah, Inquisitor.” Someone pushes a tankard into his hands, and he must lick the ale off his fingers before he finds a stool or a chair in the crowded circle round the Herald and her companions.

“Aye,” the woman continues, raising her own cup as if to salute a grim and fast-approaching doom, “I bet you'd not join us. Too many reports. Too many people. Too much ale.” Her laughter strikes out again: a raucous chuckle as thick as Nevarran honey. “I hate ale. Tastes like piss and dirt, amongst other reasons. I was wrong. About you. But not about the ale – that's still quite terrible,” she adds, eyes rolling skywards. 

Cullen fears his mouth has fallen open. He coughs into his fist instead, adjusting his perch on the stool. Josephine's tinkling, silver bell mirth follows hot on the heels of the Inquisitor's.

“You must get used to nobles, Commander.” The Antivan woman says, drink held delicately in her soft-looking hands. “We're not all straight-backed, stone serious, narrow minded slaves to fashion, you know. And we ladies do not always burst into flames once a bit of filthy language passes our lips.”

“Andraste's sainted Blood, Josie!” the Inquisitor all but chokes out, in between fits of laughter, “if that were true, I'd be a cinder by now. Burnt away in some Rivaini dhemesh ages ago.”

“Stop dithering about, woman! You lost. Wager's up. Tell me a story, or I'll tell one for you.” Dorian interrupts, finger jabbing at the Inquisitor's shoulder with every word. “And you know precisely which one I'll tell.” He feels as drunk as she looks, and he's glad that he'll not have to drag her far to see her safely abed. After Haven, after those monsters, and that fucking archdemon, and that awful, twisted creature whose voice rang with the lilting music of familiar, ancient Tevene, he craves something other than death. Hungers for something bright. Something altogether happy, and without a shadow creeping beneath every stiff gesture. He wants her to smile, and not think about the snow, or the fact that he left her behind in its crushing wake. 

“Void take you, Dorian.”

“Please,” he chortles, waving a hand as if to beckon her on, “I await your indulgence.”

The Inquisitor shakes her head and sets her cup on the bar behind her. For good measure, she squares her shoulders.

“I'm terribly unsure how much any of you know of Ostwick, or the lands my House has claim over. So this is where I tell you I am not from a line of snobbish, useless, blood-as-blue-as-lyrium nobles who live off their serfs and their citizens like great, fat spiders. Or any other disgusting metaphor for highborns a certain lass I know might be so inclined to use.”

Sera chuffs, a wicked gleam in her eyes and her freckled cheeks red as cherries. 

“In Ostwick we are, in every sense of the word, peasant lords. I am a very wealthy sheep herder. My mother, the Teryn, was a sheep herder, and my grandfather, and my great grandmother, so on and so on down the line of my Blood from time immemorial.”

“Sheep?” Dorian and Leliana query, musical voices nearly in unison. Both wear the same, awful smile: the one that is a little too sharp, and speaks of future games. 

“Shush you two,” the Inquisitor chides, with teeth bared in a blistering smile, “I like sheep.”

Sera falls off her chair, hands clapped around her mouth and wearing her drink on her shoulders.

“What? Sheep are simple. Friendly. If they smell, you wash them. If they get lost, you go find them. Most of my life was spent far north of Ostwick, in the mountain region of Montjuïc. My family keeps an ancient fortress there.” Laughter stretches her tongue and she waves her hand high as if to recall the reasons why she'd chosen to speak. “A great pile of mossy stones meant to watch for magisters, and slavers, and filthy Orlesians, or some other shite like that.”

Dorian sniffs, taking a long pull of his beer. Not that he will tell anyone that is what is in his cup. 

“As I was saying,” the woman drawls, “sheep are simple. And being the Teryn's heir, I was responsible for maintaining the flocks, for ensuring the shearing in spring went well, and the lambs were all safe and accounted for. As part of my family's tradition, I had a pet. Of sorts. Well, I suppose pet is close enough. On my 9th name day, I got the first-born lamb of that spring season. I named her Yvane. Sheep are not terribly long lived, fifteen years at worst, twenty at best. So when she passed I chose Moriu the next spring. Now, my Moriu is a great big ram, and with his horns he comes up to just under my ribs. Big ram. Very noticeable. I put a silver bell on him, and a lovely yellow collar as a precaution against those who might forget who's House owns the land and the animals from here to the ridge of the sky.”

“Maker's Breath,” someone mutters.

“So Moriu and I go about our herding, and my boy's got quite the reputation among the sheep lasses.”

From the floor, Sera shrieks. 

“Thusly, news of his quality as a stud has apparently spread beyond my family's holdings?” She shrugs, as if the details are still inherently puzzling to her. “And on this fine spring day a man approached me and my Moriu, while I was tending to the portion of sheep meant to be sheared for our twice yearly trade with House Bin-Yerehs in Rivain. Now, these sheep are our finest, and their wool is what has kept my House's finances sailing high for generations, so I am rather unwelcoming to this odd little man with the lopsided cap.”

“Orlesian?” Leliana mutters. “Or Nevarran?”

The Inquisitor rolls her eyes heavenward, again. “So this odd little imp marches up to me, and says, plain as the Maker's Hand, that he'd like to experience Moriu's virility for himself. And, and I assure you my cousin will never let me forget this, the first words out of my fool mouth are: 'You want to fuck my sheep? Why do you want to fuck my sheep? He's a sheep! No! He's my pet. You can't fuck my pet! Piss off, filthy troll.” 

The Inquisitor bursts into peals of thunderous laughter, just as Dorian throws himself into her arms with an undignified howl, sides heaving and tears streaming down his face. 

Cullen sputters, the shrieking, cackling chorus growing, and finds himself chuckling along with the others, until his laughter grows with the redness staining the Inquisitor's cheeks, until he too is clutching at his sides, bent double with the force of his unfettered, ringing laughter.

In between great, rattling gasps for air, the Inquisitor manages to choke out: “The man was an emissary from the cloth-makers guild in Nevarra, and, Andraste save me, he'd come to see if he could barter away a ram or two. For purposes. Nefarious purposes, according to my great, stupid mouth. I have never heard my cousin laugh so loud or so long ever again. He fell to the dirt and _howled_. I thought I would die, I was so red in the face.”

“You, you absolute bear!” Dorian nigh on shrieks, burying his face in her neck. “Tevinter will love you. You'll eat half the Senate for morning meal, and the other half shall thank you for the gift. That was magnificent. Truly. Such tact. Such charm. Such grace.”

“I thought Uncle Llorenç would hang me by my feet from the highest watch tower when I told of my,” the Inquisitor coughed, “parley with the man. Benito San-Cavales of the Valladolid Guild, as the Maker Himself would have it.”

Cullen can imagine it with ease: the Inquisitor, younger and full of the high vigour of eighteen summer's worth of boldness, or perhaps that is just her own natural brazenness in bloom, stood beside a great, horned beast of a ram she had the stones to call a pet, accusing a stranger of desiring intercourse with her beloved animal. Outrage would colour her face, eyes flashing like a sword sweeping down in its thundering arc – and she would become the bristling bear she resembles, knocking into any who put themselves in her path. 

He has not laughed like this in years. Years. So many long, and roughly remembered years he cannot account for them all without feeling as if he's composing some wretched Tevene tragedy, complete with wailing chorus and sorrowful, masked protagon. He'll not remember how long it has been, not here, not in the company of those so gathered. Not in the face of her joy, in the warm and generous spirit of her shared memories, and all the other stories that will no doubt fall from her mouth like bright coins from an over-full purse. 

Someone presses another ale into his hands, and this time he manages to get more of it to his mouth than the first. He tells himself it does not sting as fiercely as a little blade against his skin when Dorian does not flounder back to his own seat, but lays in the Inquisitor's arms as if he is a cat fit to be petted by her hand, and her hand alone. He watches her fingers brush over skin nearly the same shade as her own, sure and tender in their motions, and ignores the misery clenching like a fist in his gut.

A better man would say that friendship is all he thought to have from such a woman as the Herald. Save that, he reminds himself, she's not the Herald any longer. She is the the Right High and Most Holy Lady Inquisitor, now. But, he must remind himself, she has never stopped being the daughter of a Teryn: the first-born, most beloved heir to a House whose holdings stretch to the borders of Antiva, even beyond, as the heir of her father's House as well. 

She is above him, beyond him. She will remain so.

A better man would not think that after a warm meal and an hour's conversation – entirely devoid of that practiced, familiar coldness – that some little chance was being stoked to life. A better man would have only thoughts of companionship unfurling in his mind. Or, perhaps he might have been able to think in such a manner if that after noon meal had been the sum total of his experiences in the Inquisitor's company.

Cullen is still struggling with that – with being a better man.

“Inquisitor,” Cassandra speaks, her strident voice suddenly overloud in the din. “Do you mean to tell me we've just chosen a sheep herder to save all of Thedas from the Breach? That Val Royeaux will have to listen to, be swayed by, a noblewoman who would rather keep company with little, wooly animals than spend an hour in morning matins?”

“Sheep from Ostwick are not little, Lady Cassandra,” is the Inquisitor's stone-faced reply, before she scatters her severity to the wind and cackles, head thrown back and colour high on her cheeks. “And I like the company of others well enough. I simply lack patience for fools.”

“And there are so many, many fools about, aren't there sweetling?” Dorian chimes in.

Cassandra appears to consider the Inquisitor's words with a cold, steady hand, her face still and her gaze quite. “Then we have chosen well.” A smile creeps onto her lips, a dry twitch quickly catching alight, turning into a fulsome, toothy grin. “After all, sheep herders aren't known for their tyrannical desire to rule over their charges with an iron fist.” 

The laughter is thick, longer and louder and so easily given it carries away great chunks of misery and fear like a swift moving river; Cullen flounders into its currents with a glad heart. 

“Another story?” Sera crows, waving her flagon in the air in the hopes of being serviced. “Can we ask Inky awkward questions now? D'you think she'd answer?”

“Depends on the questions, abejita,” the Inquisitor replies, words rumbling out of her chest as like thick, dark syrup. 

“D'yalike boys or girls? I'm only askin' so I know. For future and such. Reasons.”

“Both.”

“Yer last lover? Ever had a lover?”

“Sera!” The voice might be Josephine's, or Cassandra's, or Cullen's.

“Asha. Certainly not my first, but still the most beautiful woman I have ever had the pleasure of knowing. Her hair grows in tight curls, and when she left it unbraided she was like a fearsome sandcat with a great mane of gold. Skin much darker than my own, eyes a rich green-gold. Tongue like a whip, and a mind as fine and cutting as any Orlesian damé of the grand game. I'm afraid I am a weak woman, and I am easily swayed by a pretty, blonde head. It's the contrast. I find it pleasing. Like so much black ink spilled on sunny gold.”

Cullen swallows thickly; the Inquisitor's eyes do not leave his for several breaths too long to be called proper. 

“Where is she now?”

“Rivain, organizing trade caravans and charting routes on the whale-roads. The ocean.”

“What happened? Did y'love her?”

The Inquisitor laughs, a sound like silver frost crackling underfoot, but quiet just at the edges. “The world happened, little bee. We are fast friends now, and we exchange enough correspondence to bankrupt a small nation. Her family is like mine, with the same earthy roots. Save that hers are fashioned from sand and sea. She is a dedicated scholar, and, fortuitously enough, her parents named her for Asha Subira Bahadur. She is mi reina. My great Queen.” 

The Inquisitor leans forward – the long black rope of her hair falling over her shoulder, and a scorching, wicked grin unfurling on her handsome face – and says: “What she calls me, that is hers to keep.”

Cassandra makes an odd, impatient snort, but her eyes shine brightly in the shivering firelight. “Those were some fine words, Inquisitor. Are you quite certain you and Varric are not exchanging notes?”

“Bristles and I are co-authoring my next book, Seeker.” The dwarf chuckles, patting at his thick jacket for his carefully folded bundle of notes. He'll have to be careful not to drink too much more – wouldn't want to forget that lovely bit of history shared by the Inquisitor just yet. Should take notes more carefully. “She's got quite a way with words. Mostly the racy ones.” 

Varric is very sure Curly is going to have an aneurism: the poor man's face is as red as mashed summer berries. 

And then the Bull is leaning into their little circle, eager to share his story about his own favourite lover, a redheaded elvhen lad who's family had made the journey to Lomeryn while he was a babe. His words are much more _evocative_ than the Inquisitor's. Sera's is an exquisitely rambling mess of just how badly she'd like a fair qunari lass to sweep her off her feet. Has a thing for tall ladies, apparently. 

“The Maker fashions all sorts.” Varric laughs. “Maybe one day I'll fall in with a bunch of sane heroes.” He watches as Josephine slips off her chair, drink sloshing noisily as she attempts to keep the wine off her fine dress. Blackwall offers her his hand, but he can't quite seem to reach for a Josie that isn't one of the four he must be seeing on the floor, and the little circle dissolves into snorting giggles from there. 

Someone, someone named Cole, if Varric had to guess, has tied ribbons to The Bull's horns: red and yellow and blue winding up and down like freshly decorated jousting lances.

No, Varric thinks, probably not.

~ * ~

Cassandra is the first to depart. Followed closely by Leliana and Josephine. Dorian and the Inquisitor not half a turning of the glass afterwards; the Bull is snoring, and Sera is draped across his lap like the red ribbons on his horns. 

Cullen is warmly, pleasantly, thoroughly drunk.

Very drunk.

“Hey Curly.” Varric drawls, rolling his head back to catch sight of the former Knight-Commander slumped against the bar. The man is clutching his tankard as if it were a rope tossed out in a storm, his face ten years younger despite the dark circles under his eyes. “Betcha you didn't think Bristles had a thing for blondes.”

“Please don't tease me right now, Varric,” Cullen manages to slur, chin resting on his forearm. “I'm afraid I'm not sober enough to keep up.”

Varric snorts, digging out his notes and flicking the tip of his quill with his tongue. Good thing he always keeps an ink pot in his pocket too. “Now that our man has established that the hero of his dreams does not, in fact, _hate_ his miserable face, maybe it would be a good idea for you to go make sure Bristles actually got back to her quarters without falling over the wall somewhere along the way?”

“I shouldn't presume.” Cullen replies, almost by reflex, voice entirely too sharp for the honey-soft thoughts sweetening his mind. “And Dor...Dori...Dorian,” he finishes, tongue seemingly glued to the roof of his mouth, “is more than capable of taking good care of her.”

“She told you that story for a reason, Curly.” Varric spends a few moments wondering if he could hit Cullen over the head in a way that wouldn't result in a concussion, or a great, fat bruise on his pretty face. Human men. So unintelligent.

“She told everyone that story, Varric.” Cullen mutters, with just a twinge of sourness. He does not mean to dwell, to pick away until he pulls up something crafted entirely from his own lurid imaginings. Her tall frame invades his thoughts under the waking sun with enough frequency that he doesn't need to take her image to bed as well. Or, he shouldn't. But that is far from reality, no matter how much he takes care to scrape the wishing out of his bones.

“Don't play dense, Commander. Doesn't suit you.”

Cullen huffs, burying his nose into the cold bite of his vambrace. 

“Get off that chair, Curly. Go for a walk.”

“Fine.”

The cold hits him like a druffalo's horns, and he staggers away from the smoky, warm light of the quieted tavern. 

_Never again_ , he thinks blearily, struggling to put one foot in front of the other as he marches himself up the stairs to the high, empty battlements. The tower is not far, but his head is stuffed with cotton and heat, and he moves as if he's wading through Fallowmire mud. The cold will beat the worst of the confusion out of him by the time he staggers to the door leading to his equally cold office. At least he hopes that it will.

Above his head an owl shrieks, and the long, wailing cry of a fox follows swiftly on the heels of the insect music near the walls. The stars shift and spin like Wintersend dancers about a ribboned pole, and Cullen can feel himself tilting back as he cranes his neck to take in the sprawl.

He never expected the Frostbacks to be quite so beautiful.

It's then that he sees the shape across the battlements – someone, or something moving like a tall, black banner against a dark, silver-pierced sky. Pacing. 

Fumbling for his sword, he moves as quickly as his feet will allow, a fresh, burning alarm wicking away the drunken contentedness.

“Commander?” The Inquisitor barks, surprise write clear as day across her face. “What in the Maker's Name are you doing out here?”

“I could say the same for you, my Lady,” Cullen retorts hotly, prying his traitorous fingers off the hilt of his sword. He will not do that again, not ever again. He will not bring himself to her with his hands on his sword. “It's bitterly cold out, and you left the tavern some time ago. I thought Master Pavus took you to your quarters?”

“I left Dorian there. Nearly broke my neck trying to get him into the bed. He'll be most unhappy with me come morning. I don't think I piled enough furs on him. He'll be cold.” She does not intend for her tongue to make such a sour mess of her words, but company was not something she expected tonight.

“Is, is there a reason you did not join him, my Lady?” There is nothing in his voice, nothing. 

“Many,” is her reply. 

“Such as...” He does not mean to pry. Or perhaps he truly does, and this is the gentlest way his muddled brain can manage. 

“I would suggest you ask him that question, Commander.” The Inquisitor snorts, a sharp sound that ricochets out over the stone walls in the all-consuming silence of nightfall. She leans back, lifts her face to the field of stars above their heads, and takes a great, shuddering breath.

Cullen opens his mouth, but finds the weight of her gaze snaps it shut again. There is something very sharp under her skin, something very, very bitter.

“Is something the matter, Inquisitor?”

“I do not often drink to excess, Commander, and I pray you do not think less of me for this.”

“My lady?” There is a sorrow in her voice that falls between them like shards of broken pottery, sand and grit rubbing raw the tongue on which it sits. 

“The night Coreypheus attacked, and the Red Templars came down for the mountains, I'd been making plans to depart.” Her eyes stay firmly rooted out beyond the walls, hands clasped behind her back with an iron-banded strength.

For a moment, Cullen feels as if he's been struck on the jaw so hard it sends him reeling. 

“I thought my use was spent, and that the Inquisition would have no further need for a creature like me. And,” she breathes with a raking sorrow, “and I could not bear the thought of more scrutiny, more notoriety. I could not abide watching the refugees, more and more souls streaming in by the day, racing to the gates as if I could save them. As if a sheep-herder from Ostwick, a hedge-mage, somehow knew the answers to all their questions.”

“Why?” Cullen retorts, stepping closer to the tall shadow stood before him, unmoving as stone: an icon, fit for worship of the highest order. “Why would you have sought to leave? Can you not see you are wanted here?”

Her proud, knife-sharp face cracks, an ugly roiling seeping into her gaze. “I have spent nearly all my life hiding away in the teeth of a mountain not so different from this one. I have lived much of my life afraid of many things.” She snarls, bites her lip between her teeth, red and redder still as the moments pass. “And yet driven, pushed to be better and braver than any who might match me. All in the name of survival. In the name of safety. Everything I learned, every awful lesson I took at the hands of strangers and family alike screams at me, daily. Hourly. Everything I am shouts at me, reminds me of the danger. I should not be here!” She curses, breath whistling out between bared teeth. “And every day I spend walking about letting all of Thedas see what I am brings my family more danger than I can imagine. They bought my freedom with the wages of all the generations of my House yet to come. How can I ask them to suffer so? To take such a terrible risk when I am not there to defend them?”

Cullen feels a cold, bracing panic creeping along his tongue. Danger? Was her family in danger? Who would strike out at a noble House for choosing to keep their child?

_The Templars._ His mind supplies. _The Chantry. And well you know it._ Of course she is afraid. How could she not be?

She ducks her head, chin tucked against her fine, dark cloak; her braids have nearly come undone, and the gold twine twists through her hair like weeds in a dark pond.

“Because of my anger, my fear, my outrage, the Templars are gone. How can you, or Cassandra, or anyone gathered here, ask me to make these choices? Why? Why would you let someone like me do these things?”

Cullen opens his mouth as if to answer, save that he truly, wretchedly, has no answer to give her other than the mess of hope, and security, and purpose slowly growing in the most private corners of his heart. The Inquisition gave him the seeds, and she is the water, the fire.

“I made that choice out of anger! Out of a certainty that nothing good could come of allowing Templars to aid the Inquisition. But that choice was not a neutral one. Oh, I tried to make it thus, but that is a lie.” She wails, more a hoarse cry of choking rage than anything else. “I was taught to keep myself safe. I was taught to fear. Taught to let that fear make me strong, strong enough to survive whatever the cost. And because of that your brothers and sisters have been made into monsters. I put my sword through people who not so long ago had faces, hearts, families. I tore through them, felt their last breath on my face.” She knots her hands in her hair, and begins to pace in tight, violent circles, words clipped and brittle and soaked in red. 

“I did that,” she whispers, and it is deadly fine. Cutting. “How can you trust me again? If you ever did. No one, no one deserves to be twisted like that. To have their minds torn from them, made mockeries of all that they stood for. All that they hoped to achieve. I cannot. I have. I have nothing. My heart is with the mages, with my own kind, I cannot change that now. But it haunts me. I cannot sleep. I do not want this power, Commander. And I am afraid. And you should not have had to listen to this.”

Haven taught him how much farther he still has to go before he can be satisfied in his pursuit of that ever elusive goal: to be a better Knight, a better man, a better friend. 

He'd abandoned her under the Chantry's shaking roof, the roars of an archdemon the only music left to give life to the place they'd called home, with so little protest he cannot think overlong on that night without feeling sick at heart. He left her. It is of no regard that he left her on her orders. It does not matter that he would have preferred to stay. Nor does it matter that she'd looked at him with something sharper than regret, but no less cutting. 

He had left her. Turned his back on her. Watched her go out through those doors with her head high, knowing, _believing_ death was all that waited for her. 

Marched their soldiers and weeping civilians through the mountains as if there was some safety to drag them towards. As if there was any hope left, now that she was gone from this world.

As if his pleading on his knees in the snow and the silence was penance enough for abandoning the Bride's chosen. As if the Maker would deign return a woman such as she to a man such as him. 

And yet the Maker, the Maker had returned her to them. 

To him. 

If he had spent too much time in her little tent with only the sound of her ragged breathing to absolve him of his shapeless guilt, no one made any noise over his behaviour. Not even Dorian had complained over much, though the Tevinter man hadn't let him touch anything other than her hands during his visits, and always removed him come evening, before sealing up the tent flap to settle in for the night.

Mages cared for their own kind. Cullen understood that well enough. 

“Stop. Please.”

She lowers her gaze to his and he is afforded the opportunity to see, with such exquisite detail, just how quickly she can raise high her walls. 

Mage. Templar. Prisoner. Jailer. Everything between them that is built of a fear so ancient there are no more swords sharp enough left to carve something other than pain from its nameless, towering shape. 

“What would have become of the mages, had you not ridden to Redcliffe? Made into monsters like the Order? Made to betray all that they hold dear at the behest of a beast so twisted he can pour poison down men's throats and send them off to die in the snow like dogs?” Fire touches his tongue, kisses along his neck, makes sharp the red softness in his chest. “You walked out of that Chantry with your head held high, my Lady. Death was,” he falters, chews on the memories and finds the sour bite of nausea on his tongue, “I – I truly believed you would not survive. A foolish thing on my part, it would seem.” 

He is a leader of men, and he will pick her up out of the dirt her knees do not belong in, just this once, so that she will be strong enough never to have to bend her proud frame again. 

“You were willing to give your life for people you did not know by name, people who would have hated you but a handful of weeks ago. You put your trust in me, to see them through, though you had little cause to do so. What blame you seek, it is a phantom. A shade. And as for the Order, well, it is difficult to save a house with so much rot in the foundations.”

The wind is bitter, and the night sounds roar around the pair in a jangling, ungentle song.

“And I am not a Templar.”

“No,” she smiles, mouth so sharp, so brittle it cuts like a blade, “you are not. Your sword is mine.”

“Yours,” is his uncomplicated, too-honest reply, and it earns him a smile the likes of which he has never seen before.

“The Maker returned you to us. I must believe that. And I would have you believe it too.” 

“I am not to be commanded,” the Inquisitor laughs, voice as thin as spider's silk. She told him of Asha for a reason, and perhaps he has understood better than she might have hoped.

“Perhaps, my Lady, you would consider it a wish. You have been kind, and you have asked nothing of me I have not been happy to give. We will follow you to whatever end. I will follow, gladly.”

But were he a braver man, he would ask for more.

Her face softens, rage and shame falling away with each little breath of silence. He watches her, fingers itching in his gloves, and wonders what she will allow him. There is a line in the stones between them, but it has not been drawn by their own hands.

When she raises up her hand, he keeps still as a hart in the presence of a wolf. 

When her gloved palm cups his cheek, cold but solid under the driving wind, he bites his tongue to keep the _please_ off his lips. 

There is a line, and he cannot be the one to scuff it out.

“You are often ill come midday, and you hold yourself as if someone has put a blade between your ribs. Will you tell me what brings you such pain, Commander?”

“Soon,” he manages.

“As you wish,” is her gentle reply.


	3. The vain travail hath wearied me so sore,

~ * ~ 

With a frustrated groan, Cullen tosses a scroll denoting the major trading Houses in Antiva and Rivain willing to enter into business with the Inquisition to the floor. Josephine is a brilliant woman, but her eye for detail and her drive to bring the wealth of an empire into the Inquisition's coffers means he must ever be organizing his own soldiers for long distance travel. Maps and scribbled names drive him mad on the best of days, and today is not a good day.

Hands knotted in his hair, he slumps to his desk.

“Someone fool enough to piss in your elfroot tea this morning, Commander?”

“What do you want, Pavus?”

“A measure of that Ferelden civility you Chantry types seem to never be in possession of, perhaps.” The mage drawls, a crooked smile on his face. “Better yet, I'd like you to come out of this little hole you call an office and spend some time in the sun, pretend to be something other than a stubborn nug in its den.” 

“I should be insulted by your brazenness, Dorian,” Cullen grumbles, not bothering to raise his head up of his desk. Let the man talk himself to death, today is a day that has already worn his patience thinner than a wet thread. The ache in his bones and the red pounding in his head has only grown worse, no matter how much he tries to cram thoughts of the Inquisitor into the moments not eaten up by the bitter song of lyrium's absence. “But I think that would please you very much.”

“Finally.” Dorian claps, rubbing his hands together. “Awareness dawns! At long last, the fruits of my endeavours have ripened.”

“I beg your pardon, Messere?”

“None of that.” 

Dorian wears his distaste for titles like some sort of bitterly won badge of honour. Someday, Cullen will ask why. 

“You should know by now, Commander, that I put no stock in such things.” 

“What do you put stock in then, Dorian?”

“A little bird told me you play a ruthless game of chess,” Dorian offers back, picking along the shelves of the Commander's humble library for something of note. He doesn't want to tell the Inquisitor that this strapping ex-Templar she's making wolf noises over is not only a brute, but an unlearned brute at that. He's not overly concerned with mucking around in whatever is going on between these two, but he is keen to be absolutely sure this man isn't a danger to his dear friend. Templars and mages do not often cease to be who, or what they are.

“Have you assembled this little collection yourself, Commander?”

Cullen looks up, lays unsteady hands flat atop his desk. “Is that begrudging approval I here?”

“I did not take you for a lover of gentle-hearted, quick-tongued Marcher poetry, never mind Tevene tragedies.” Dorian wears his levity like a pretty bauble, nothing more than a tool for distraction, but he feels much more like a hound after a fleeing hart. The Inquisitor has been kind to him, offering up such an utterly uncomplicated acceptance of what and who he is that he feels a pauper in her good company. And so tis not so much to him, to spend a day or two rooting around in this man's business. If the Commander is anything more than the Templar he used to be, Dorian will know soon enough. 

“Come and play a set with me, Commander.” Dorian summons, holding out his hand for the other man to lift himself from the sea of ivory parchment and used ink-sand. “In the garden, in the sunshine, where we may pretend to be nothing more than two friends spending the hours in idle repose.” 

Cullen takes the hand extended to him, and finds, curiously enough, that there is no refusal on his lips.

The walk is brisk, and with much of Skyhold still in ruins the inner court yard is crowded with civilians and soldiers and craftspeople alike. Most of the inner walls are covered in hastily assembled scaffolds, their profusion making it appear as if the long wooden constructions are strange growths on the once proud face of an ancient king, and a hundred little ants are busy scrabbling around on stick-like legs to repair so much exposed bone. Woodsmoke and the ash from the forges sweetens the air, all under the brisk scent of pine and freshly upturned earth. 

There is a palpable excitement striding round the Inquisition's newfound home, and it makes all so gathered here move with a lightness of step Cullen cannot quite let go of, no matter how devoted to establishing his training regimes he has become. He hasn't felt this _clean_ in decades. Not since he first joined the Order, and all before him unfurled itself like a silver ribbon, fine and bright and full of an endless, noble promise. 

Remembering those days brings him little profit.

Dorian loops an arm through his, and Cullen finds there's nothing in him that seeks to push the other mage away. He's slowly found himself seeking out the opportunity to be touched by those he counts as friends, and it feels as if he's unwittingly spent a decade in a vast desert he's only just realized he's passed through alive. It takes a great deal of his well forged restraint not to simply fall face down in the water and drink.

If he allowed himself to care, he'd be embarrassed by how _starved_ he feels when the Inquisitor touches him. 

Arm in arm they make their way to the gardens within the fortress' higher walls; the Inquisitor has set about building herself a private, glass and silverite greenhouse, and its tessellated shape gleams under the strong noonday sun, catching the eyes of most who wander about the place. Cullen would wager they are as curious as he is to see the project completed. 

“Do all hedge mages have a love for green things, I wonder?”

“Most.” Dorian laughs, but not unkindly. It is not the Commander's fault he knows so little of magic outside the teachings of the Chantry. “It comes with the territory, Commander.”

The chess board has been set up under an ivy choked trellis, and when Cullen takes a seat the world is painted in fat drops of gold and green. He cannot help but think the Inquisitor would find this place charming. 

“Shall we play by Tevinter rules, or Ferelden nonsense?” Dorian quips, fingers tracing the little, finely carved pieces; perhaps it is the sun, or the lovely canopy of leaves, but he knows his smile is entirely too soft. It has been a long time since he's felt safe enough to seek out friendship amongst strangers. Time will tell if he can truly write Commander Cullen's name on that pathetically short list or not.

“Ferelden nonsense, thank you very much, ser.” Cullen laughs, voice like honey and the bur of a sword sliding into its scabbard. 

It does not take long to see who intends to play fair, and who intends to be as ruthless as their little, carven soldiers will allow. Neither man sees fit to complain.

~ * ~

The weeks creep under his nose, and suddenly it is summer in the Frostbacks, or whatever parades about blatantly pretending to be summer that is. The recruits and veterans alike make noise over the lack of genuine heat, but Cullen runs them through their drills regardless. A few of his more enterprising captains have taken the time to build a wooden training ring along the southern wall of the staging grounds; now that the month of Solace has arrived, the ring has become a gathering place for over eager, hot blooded lads and lasses to tussle in the dust and the sunshine. It also helps that the stones turn the ring into something like a sunning rock for anyone who is less inclined to the colder haunts found around the fortress. 

The wall is warm to the touch, hot even, and under the heavy handed sunlight Cullen can close his eyes for a moment and let the heat leech the ache from his bones. 

“Commander?”

Cullen startles, peering up into the cloudless sky for the source of the voice above his head.

“Inquisitor?”

“Certainly not the Maker, if you were hoping for answers from the Heavens.” She returns with a chuckle, flicking the long rope of her hair over her shoulder. “I heard some of your soldiers talking about this little corner, and I thought I would investigate.”

“Is it to your liking, my lady?” The Inquisitor has somehow managed to sling her tall frame atop the wall and is sprawled out end to end like a great black cat, only her hair and her sword dangling perilously over the edge. “Also is it entirely safe?”

“The stones are very warm Commander, and I have not spent the months between Justinian and August in the cold of the South in years.” Her reply is as warm as the earth around them, full of dust and contentedness. 

Cullen shakes his head. He'll not pretend to understand nobles. “Missing a summer home, Inquisitor?”

The woman on the wall snorts, her sword jingling with its own merry song. “No, nothing so terribly ostentatious as that. If any highborn here has a summer home, that is Altus Pavus, I assure you.” She bites her tongue between her teeth and pushes herself up onto her elbows, glancing down at the Commander. Under the heavy hand of the sun, the man's hair has spun itself into a rich cropping of ripe wheat, and it is a lovely colour indeed. Such a lovely colour it almost begs to be touched. To make matter worse, it is slowly curling at the ends. 

She tucks her fingers into her palm and continues.

“My father is not a Marcher but an Antivan merchant-prince of House Tolivara, in case you could not mark me out by the colour of my skin. Every summer season I climbed aboard our fleetest ship, and ran wild through the cities of Antiva and Rivain. I have a particular affection for Llomeryn and its markets. Ostensibly I was there on business, of course.”

“Ah, I often forget you have been to Rivain.” Cullen answers, leaning back against the wall to soak up a greater portion of heat. “What is it like?”

“Magnificent,” is her quiet reply. “The Kingdom is vibrant, and there is such a love of history, and for the beauty of their lands. I find myself missing the companions I have made in those lands more often than I care to admit. I always hated coming home. I learned much under the tutelage of Rivaini hedge mages. They have no fear of magic in them, it was...”

“Freeing?” Cullen supplies, a frown tugging at the corners of his mouth. “You do not speak much of how your family kept you from the Circle. I am curious as to how they managed it. I must confess, Inquisitor, you are not like any mage I've ever met.” The moment the questions leave his mouth he is forthwith regretful. Such knowledge is not his to ask for, and it is likely that she keeps such answers very close to her breast. Her family risked much to keep her, and the danger of their venture is now no longer lost on him. 

He still hasn't answered the questions she had asked him all those weeks ago, on that bitterly cold night on the battlements; his drunkenness hadn't eased any of that night's sharpness come the dawn. 

The memory of her hand on his cheek, that has not eased either. Not at all.

“Ah, Commander, you plucked the word off my tongue.” There is a tenuous thread of mirth weaving through her words. “It was freeing. And to answer your question...”

“I apologize if I have been impertinent, my lady. I – I am not good with small talk.” Truly, he truly has little understanding of how to speak to her outside of the war-room. Outside of his office as Commander. Every conversation feels beyond his right. Beyond what a man of his experience should ask for in the company of a mage such as she. 

Her laughter is bright and uncomplicated, and it scoops out the clutch of thorns that had been prickling in Cullen's chest. 

“I am afraid it is a very long story, but I can tell you it mostly involved teaching me to be the very image of a highborn: well schooled in the arts of the sword and the horse and the japing of other blue blooded fools. They taught me to be a Knight. A Knight of strength and skill so far removed from the softness of a mage that there could be no suspicion of the magic under my skin.” 

A hundred questions leap up in his mind, along with a well worn shame: even a woman raised beyond the shadows of the Circle still fears its walls. And men like him breathed that fear into her young heart long ago. “Did your parents fear the Templars would discover you? Is that why you use a sword rather than a staff?”

“Yes.”

Her reply falls like a stone, silencing any other questions that might rise up between them, but the old, quiet pain in that singular affirmation pricks at Cullen all the same, hard enough to draw blood. 

“Would you like to see just how good I am with my sword, Commander?” The words drip from her lips like honey, red-bow mouth wide and full of laughter. 

“I beg your pardon?” He chokes, just a little. The image of her crashing through the ranks of red templars with a calculated, implacable brutality sears to the forefront of his thoughts, bringing with it the roaring, ash and fire terror of that night Corypheus sought to bury them all. She'd met the beasts blow for blow, cruelty for cruelty: a savage hammer made of fire and rock and a thunderously bright sword moving in a great, winnowing arc. 

“We've hit upon some unpleasantness, Commander. I find it is often best to do something else when one accidentally stumbles upon bits of ugliness like this.”

“Part of your training?” Cullen muses; he doesn't quite manage to tear up the bitter taste in his mouth, and it seeps onto his lips with alarming clarity. 

“No,” the Inquisitor offers back with a little grin, “more a courtesy among friends.”

Cullen watches her drop down from the wall with a heavy, jangling thud; she's dressed in a dark, plum coloured tunic that reaches to her ankles, and beneath that is silver chain-mail. The milk and honey coloured crest of her House is embroidered upon the left breast, and he tries not to stare too intently at its markings. She always manages to cut such a striking figure, and he'd dearly like to tell her thusly.

“Are you asking me to spar, Lady Trevelyan?” Not for the first time, he wishes he could pronounce her name without sounding the fool, but she rarely speaks it in anyone's company and its syllables fit poorly on his dull Ferelden tongue. 

“Aye, Commander, if you're amenable to such a thing. You fight with an admirable ferocity, and it would be most enjoyable to test my sword with a man of your,” she pauses, swallowing down _Templar_ before it can edge past her teeth, “particular abilities.”

Suddenly it is unbearably hot, and the light above his head is beating down upon him with an unkind strength. His blood pounds in his veins, and his heart turns to shivering in his chest like a bird fleeing a peal of thunder. “Of course, my lady. I would be glad to see how well we are matched.”

“Is that a promise, Commander? I'll not tolerate being treated tenderly. Understood?” Enough time has passed that she gives out orders with ease, but for him she'll give him her teeth as well. He seems to like that: her wolfish, sharp-toothed leer. 

Her voice is like steel laid against his spine, and Cullen must breathe through the need that hollows out his guts. Maker, what he wouldn't give to have her clap a hand over the back of his neck to drag him close, and put her challenge into his mouth with her teeth and her tongue. 

“I would take your plate off, if I were you. It's rather hot in that ring.” The Inquisitor laughs, shrugging out of her long tunic, mail and padded jacket until she is left with only her thin shirt, breeches and boots. She gives him her back, rather than insult whatever delicate sensibilities the Ferelden man might have. “Are you comfortable using steel? I haven't used practice swords in a decade.”

“Steel is fine,” he replies, unbuckling his plackart and greaves with a ruthless efficiency he does not feel, “so long as we agree no blood?”

“No blood.” The Inquisitor snickers, two fingers pressed to her lips. “I assure you, Commander, this isn't some roundabout way to get myself a new General for the Inquisition's forces. Fear not.”

“Oh no, my Lady, you misunderstand. I should not like to think what Altus Pavus will do to me if the Inquisitor goes to evening meal in anything less than pristine condition.” He may not have a fine tongue nimble enough to speak of all that he desires from her, but he knows this, knows the clash of steel and the heat of a challenge. He can be bold here. Perhaps she'll see what his intentions are now. 

The Inquisitor throws back her head and laughs, and laughs, and laughs. “Boy,” she growls, and the rasping of her sword flying from its scabbard is over loud in the silence, “I do hope you enjoy the taste of dirt.” 

“Boy?” Cullen mocks. “I am your senior by at least four summers!”

“Aye.” She parries, stepping lightly into the ring; the point of her sword draws a thin line in the unvarnished wood as she sweeps to Cullen's left. Shield arms with no shields are most exploitable. “And I'll be sure to put you on your knees as gently as I am capable of, you have my word. Can't have you reduced to hunching over the war table on the morrow, Commander.”

Cullen surges forward, catching the flat of the Inquisitor's sword before she dances away on nimble feet. The sound of steel meeting steel makes his blood spark and heat, and he must put his tongue between his teeth to keep from grinning like a madman. It's been a good number of years since he's felt such a wild, unchecked anticipation. Worse still, he cannot even be bothered to be angry at her for lighting the fire he's willingly thrown himself into. That fire calls him forward. Forward and up, up to the heights. To the unknown. 

The pair circle one another, feet kicking up dust and sending the newly laid wood planks to creaking under their combined weight.

The Inquisitor flicks her sword up, shifting into the falcon's guard with a fluid, seamless ease. 

Cullen ducks low, bends his knees and presses to the woman's right, leaving the shadow of her sword between them. 

She watches him like a hawk, gaze alight with a spark-to-tinder heat. He steps a hair's breadth too close and her sword comes down with such speed it sings through the air. The impact jars him from wrist to shoulder, and the bright music of steel against steel rings out again. She follows with a flurry of hard, searing blows that are meant to give him little space to recover the feeling in his arm and shoulder. 

He whirls away and she pursues. 

Long legs carry her far with each measured step, and Cullen counts the strides she'll need to take to come into his range again in his head, waits until she takes a bare half-step farther than needed, and thrusts out to break her powerful stride. 

The Inquisitor moves like water, surging forward to ram her shoulder into his chest as he brings his sword to bear. 

The blow drives the air out of his lungs and he must stand there sucking in air like a fish to the music of the mage's laughter. It's becoming very apparent just how well her parents taught their daughter, and for that Cullen is very grateful: her skill has saved both their lives, on more than one occasion. He prays to the Maker and His Bride that it will continue to do so.

“Was I too rough with you, Commander?” The woman laughs, sweat gathering on her brow and breath whistling through her teeth. “I'm afraid I am not the most gentle partner to be had.”

“I truly hope not, Inquisitor,” Cullen replies, swallowing down the heat of his words, though each one seems to settle in his belly as if they are slick and hot as coals. 

“Ah,” the noblewoman chuckles, a knowing light in her eyes, “I shall endeavour to remember so, Commander.” 

They meet again, moving in a tight circle that leaves little room for grand sweeping arcs. Each knows the other is too skilled for that, but it does not help that a small crowd has sprung up like weeds around the ring. 

“Your soldiers are watching,” the Inquisitor murmurs, “I'll be gentler now, if you like. I might even let you win. For the sake of morale.” She laughs. 

“Don't you dare.”

“As you wish,” is her reply, along with three bruising strikes in rapid succession, her height and reach acting as a hammer to push the shorter man further back, into a defensive position. 

Cullen sees her intent and moves swiftly to come back into her circle: the closer he dances, the less advantageous her height. 

Without warning, the Inquisitor kicks out a foot and Cullen must twist to avoid tripping, but it leaves her enough room to bring her sword to bear again. She truly has been well trained, because in less than the blink of an eye, she strikes out with force enough to send his sword arm swinging wide in recovery, upends her blade, its point braced in her left palm, and plants its wide, glittering cross guard against his neck. 

The grin on her face would shame the fairest maid in all the courts of Orlais, for it is a warrior's satisfaction: a toothsome leer full of a searing, heady pleasure.

“You didn't put me on my knees, Inquisitor. Some might call that a failure.” Her blade is still so close to his skin he can feel its chill. His pulse is racing, and he cannot quite get enough air into his lungs to ease the iron band round his lungs. What ever it is she takes from his eyes, it seems to be a great satisfaction to her, if her low, rasping breath is any indication.

The Inquisitor drops her sword, drives its point into the wood, and drags him closer still, an arm looping around his shoulders with bruising strength. Her grin is still firmly affixed to her handsome face, and her voice is as rough as the hand on his bicep. Head bent down, she gives her words to the pink shell of his ear, red-bow mouth sweet and hot. No one else is meant to hear: “Then we shall simply have to try again, Commander. I would not want to disappoint.”

Cullen laughs, throws back his head, and revels in the deep, rattling breath the Inquisitor takes as he exposes his neck to her.

Somewhere, a soldier hoots, and any reply they might give to one another is lost in a sea of applause.

~ * ~ 

When he is not sparing with the Inquisitor, or taking meals with her in the hall, or grousing over resource procurement and reconnaissance reports with her in his office, chess with Dorian becomes a just as vital to his day as she does, most especially when she is away; if he had a mind to be unfair, Cullen would admit that he is entirely surprised at how easily the Tevinter mage has fit himself into Cullen's small life. So much so that it has only taken three weeks for Cullen to scrape together enough bull-headed desperation to ask the man for advice.

About the Inquisitor, of all people.

Cullen isn't entirely sure he's prepared for whatever Dorian might reveal to him, if anything. After all, he is well aware that the Inquisitor holds Dorian head and shoulders above the rest in affection and respect, and that is a loyalty he cannot set himself against.

He misses Dorian's rather obvious feint, and blunders straight into his Knight.

“Andraste's fucking flaming ass!” Dorian groans, hands clenching around an imaginary throat. “I have given you the benefit of time, but this really is too much. Ask your questions or I shall force your watch notices down your gullet and let you choke on the wax.”

“I – I haven't a clue what you're on about,” Cullen frowns. Loudly. 

“Have mercy, man! I'm not made of stone, as you should know. I simply cannot tolerate those sad, kicked puppy eyes of yours any longer. It's driving me to distraction, and I am so very finished with two of you and your utter lack of common sense.”

Cullen feels as if someone has set a fire under his skin, only it is terribly cold and there is something sharp lodged firmly in his throat. “I beg your pardon?” He croaks; his fingers start to shiver faintly, just enough to knock his Cleric to the board. 

“I shan't have any more of this, Cullen. I will not. Whatever aid you seek from me, it is a poor substitute for the truth. I am not a citizen of these lands, and it is ever more plain to me that perhaps I would have been better served to have been born one, save for one, oh so little aspect.” Dorian barks out, pushing his Divine into check with sharp, jerking nudges from his fingers. Every angry syllable is punctuated by the scrape of stone against stone as his poor little obsidian piece is bullied into play. 

“And what little difference is that, my friend?” Cullen breathes.

Dorian snorts, a bitter smile creeping onto his face. “Mages and Templars are very different in Tevinter. So very different. And that makes me want to tear my hair out at the roots.”

“What a shame that would be,” Cullen interrupts, a strained note of mirth on his lips.

“Oh indeed.” Dorian quips, highborn and prideful as ever. “But that is not the driving point here, you ridiculous, tenderhearted fool.” 

Cullen snaps his mouth shut, teeth jarring together in a bright, steadying burst of pain. 

“I could tell you a hundred of her secrets, the little things she whispers to me when she comes to sit with me in the library, or the nights she sets up her bedroll under the largest tree in all the Wilds and makes no noise of complaint when I crawl in next to her. She's very much a bear, and as warm as you'd hope. Always has to bury her face into the back of my neck, which is truly considerate of her, as I do so hate the cold in this miserable excuse for a civilized countryside. And yet,” Dorian holds up his hand, smooth palm flashing under the green-gold canopy that is slowly turning to burnished copper as Harvestmere raised its russet head, “I think you must make that effort for yourself. She will tell you, my friend. But you must _ask_ her. Ask her for her secrets, for her cares, and one day she'll trust you well enough to hand them over without complaint. Also I am a piss poor matchmaker. My one fault, I assure you.”

“She is a mage, a hedge mage.” Cullen mourns, tongue knotted up in a distressing tangle; if he does not mash his fingers together, he'll shake apart in front of Dorian like some old, care-worn tin soldier. “What right do I have to ask her to trust the likes of me? She may not have been raised in a Circle, but her fear of the Order is not lessened for it. Nor is it without just cause. She deserves better than a man who will only – ”

“Do you enjoy pissing on your accomplishments, oh great Lion of Skyhold?” Dorian sneers, and his retort is built like a lance, like hot-from-the-fire steel. He presses his lips into a thin, bloodless line and waits for his friend's answer. If he had anything less than a lifetime of careful, painful tutelage in the importance of _manners_ , he would start hurling the little chess pieces at the other man's head, in the vain hope that the blows would let some sense seep in past all that carefully polished misery.

“I,” Cullen mumbles, shame hot on his face, “often do not see them as such.”

“Vishante Kaffas!” Dorian hisses. “Fool,” he softens. “You frustrating, well-meaning idiot.” His reward is a grimace: the shadows of a hard, scraped-raw life etching deep, old lines of fear and regret across the other man's features. Without a thought for propriety, Dorian reaches out to drag Cullen's hands into his grasp, little chess pieces scattering like leaves in their wake.

“If I can learn to trust a fucking agent of the Ben-Hassrath, you can find it in yourself to reach for whatever is in you to trust a mage. And to ask that she trust you in turn, mustn’t forget that.” The words he gives freely, with a bruising squeeze of Cullen's hands in his own. Even through the leather he can feel how unsteady the other man has become. 

“Honesty's a hard thing, my friend.” Dorian adds, thinking upon rising up to leave the other to his thoughts before dismissing the idea outright. Cullen needs a moment. A moment that will not be served by having his friend running off to lick at his own wounds. “But the rewards are fashioned from the throne of the Maker himself, or so I have learned. You may not be a Templar any longer, Cullen, but you're still the finest knight this awkward little family has under its roof. Do try to see the love and respect others have for you, dearest. It doesn't come ex nihilo, I assure you.”

Cullen finds any reply he might give to Dorian is a weak thing to hang his heart upon. Such kindness, such honesty, he ne'er could have expected, never mind accepted but a handful of years ago. 

And what a shameful thing that truth remains.

“I may have given up my vows, my friend, but there's one that always stayed with me, somehow.” The confession eases off his tongue in a rush, and he is entirely surprised that he does not taste blood in the wetness of his mouth.

“And what one is that?” Dorian murmurs. 

Tis an old vow, one born from the ancient days of the Order, before the Chantry leashed its Knights to the Circles with lyrium. Of course there is pain in its music, but it is a smaller agony than the others.

“Be without fear in the face of your enemies.” Cullen intones, the steel and fervour of his childish belief in these words rising like a long forgotten memory. “Be brave and upright that the Maker may love thee. Speak the truth always, even if it leads to your death. Safeguard the helpless and do no wrong – that is your oath. Let these words be written into your heart, all the long days of your life.”

Dorian must blink hard and fast, must pretend it's the high Harvestmere sunlight in his eyes.

“Then be brave, Commander.”

As always, as with all endeavours undertaken by the children of the Maker, it is easier said than done. Perhaps because it is terribly easy for Cullen to recall all the many occasions upon which he failed, utterly, to uphold even that old, old vow.

Even now, after having Haven torn down around their ears, after watching the Inquisitor walk out of the chapel to her certain death, after finding her in the snow, covered in her own flaking blood, and painted in a black and purple canvas of bruises, he cannot find it in himself to believe he's earned any of the surety that has slipped into his life. He's not atoned for the evils he's done, at least not to the people he truly wronged, and it feels like a great bit of ignorance on his part to seek something more from a woman who wields her freedom, and her magic, like a great, gleaning sword. 

Always it comes back to one question: should he surrender? Only, only now it is not so clear just what he is surrendering to, or to whom.

If any soul in Thedas has the power to put him on his knees, it is her. 

And he will go with a glad heart.


	4. I am of them that farthest cometh behind.

~ * ~

The Inquisitor's spindle-sharp greenhouse is finished a fortnight before Satinalia begins in earnest, and there are a great many couriers and gardeners from far-flung corners of Thedas bustling about Skyhold's gardens, much to Cullen's consternation. He and Dorian have watched the delicate structure rise up out of the rich soil with a tenacious, poorly concealed excitement: Dorian because it is a chance to resume his alchemical experiments with ingredients finer even than the high houses of Tevinter could provide for his curiosity, and Cullen because at long last the Inquisitor will have a domain all her own that will remain separate from her chambers in the tower. One can only make so many excuses to call upon a noble woman outside her solar before the gossip hungry onlookers scent blood in the water and come circling closer.

He'll not let their private, endless circling of one another be fodder for the tavern bard, not that Maryden would produce anything less than the finest, filthiest ballad in all of Thedas.

Before he can dwell any further on the opportunities the Inquisitor's greenhouse present, a beautifully wrapped parcel is dropped in his lap as if from on high. Upon closer examination, he finds the ribbon is silk dyed a wondrous yellow that stands starkly against the rich plum cambric used as wrappings. 

“She likes oranges.” Dorian laughs, waving a hand as if to dismiss Cullen's noise of protest. “Find an excuse to give them to her. Make up for that little spat you two idiots had over morning meal yesterday.”

Cullen groans, dragging his palms over his eyes. “How did you hear of that?”

“Ser, she brought you a dragon skull and twenty yards of intact scale,” Dorian chortles, dropping bonelessly into his seat, “all rolled up as if she were a cloth merchant and you were some pretty noble lady no doubt eager to see her wares.” He chafes his hands together, calling a little spark between his palms to ward off the noon day chill. “And you flounced off in a huff after she laughed at your worry. Wasn't very nice of her. Make sure she apologizes before you give her the oranges, eh?”

“She pranced out of Skyhold nearly a fortnight ago, not a word as to what venture called her away,” Cullen laments, care-worn and a little shrill in tongue, “and only when she returns, with all goodly fanfare, dragging a unstripped dragon skull behind her as if it is a little thing, does she see fit to inform me of her quest!” He grouses in a most a most unprofessional fashion, and buries his head in his hands. “Tis almost as if she knew I'd disapprove.”

“Of course she did.”

“We, I, worry enough when she leaves this fortress. Fighting a dragon, a high dragon no less, seems a pointless dance with death for a momentary thrill.” He does not care if he is being childish; nothing had prepared him for the sight of her marching back to Skyhold still covered in blood and wearing a wicked, scorching leer on her knife-sharp face. 

She'd reeked of blood, sweat, and the open road, and he'd never wanted her with such an obliterating need as in that moment she leaned down from her horse and asked him: 'Do you like it?' All he had desired was the bite of her teeth on his tongue. He'd never wanted anything so fiercely. No, want was not a fine enough word, and need a pale phantom. 

But what more is there than need? 

It had felt as if she'd laid fire under his skin, breathed sparks into his lungs, taken a sword and thrust it neatly through his chest, just to hear him gasp.

Naturally, he did not answer her question. 

“She did take the Bull, if that is some comfort to you.”

“Hardly,” Cullen mutters, sour and stung by Dorian's gentle admonishment. 

The game begins to Dorian's hearty laughter, and he intends to spend an hour in uncomplicated silence before returning to his duties. By now he knows Dorian well enough to understand that the little gift is just that, a gift. But every once in a while he remembers just how close the two mages in his life are, and it sits poorly with him how often he still feels as if the other man knows so much more about the Inquisitor than he does.

Dorian wins, and gives Cullen a kiss for his efforts before wandering off to once again push his list of very expensive, very old tomes and scrolls under Solas' nose in the vain hope the other mage will be able to convince the elvhen librarian to open the purse strings a little wider. 

Reports steal his thoughts, drive his mind back to the relentless machine he's building up around the Inquisitor as if to forestall some terrible, fast flying doom. But he does not return to the whirring machine until he carefully sets Dorian's unexpected gift on the shelf behind his cluttered desk. 

Today sees Skyhold's numbers increased by fifteen – a band of former Templars and two young, very frightened civilians: a Chevalier and his half-elvhen wife. Odd, that they would seek to leave Orlais in its entirety. Then again, if Leliana's reports from her agents in Val Royeaux and Halamshiral hold true, the situation in Orlais is falling quickly to open civil war. No doubt the Inquisition shall have to intervene shortly, if only to bully a greater share of Orlesian support than previously offered. 

“Commander?” Lieutenant Vellis calls, the sound of his armour overloud in the quiet office. “The Inquisitor asked me to deliver this to you.”

The lad hands over a neatly folded scrap of parchment, and Cullen takes it from his officer with a purposefully unhurried gesture. No reason to add any more fuel to the fire no doubt raging through the barracks. Soldiers gossip with as much undisguised fervour as noble ladies, and he'd rather not hear just how high the betting pool is now. 

“Thank you, Lieutenant Vellis, you may go now.”

With an affirmative, the Rivaini lad ambles out of Cullen's office whistling a merry tune; if Cullen held himself to a lesser standard of professionalism, he might have considered marching down to the tavern to chew Varric out over these salacious rumours. The dwarf is responsible, Cullen is certain of it. 

Flipping over the parchment, he pries open the seal with an odd sort of tenderness; House Trevelyan's crest is pressed into the red wax, and it's brittle enough to have been sealed some time go. Whatever this is, it was not written without some forethought. She wrote this in her own hand, and then sealed it with her own ring. Not the Inquisition's seal. Not the seal she carries as the daughter of an Antivan merchant-prince, but the one that is closest to her heart, and her home.

The Inquisitor's odd, spider-scrawl handwriting greets him, and he must squint to divine any sense from her words:

Commander, 

I feel foolish writing this, but I would request the honour of your company at the first evening bell after supper. 

You will find the greenhouse open, should you choose to avail yourself of this invitation.

Yours, M 

He stands up with enough speed to knock his chair over. The oranges in their rich wrappings sit in merry laughter on his shelf. 

“ _Pavus,_ ” he growls into the silence. He's been indebted to the Tevinter man before, and it seems a silly thing: a bundle of oranges and a scribbled summons, but it sets his heart to wild, uneven beating. Even now, his pulse feels like a small hammer knocking against tin.

He has three bells until the evening meal. 

Marshalling his voice, he calls for a runner, and writes his reply in a careful, steady hand.

The question is, should he dig out the red tunic, or the blue? In the still, dusty golden silence of his office, he can't help but chuckle at his thoughts – after all, he's no young, green thing, overly concerned with his appearance, or how others rate that appearance. But on this occasion, for the Inquisitor, he'll make the effort.

~ * ~

The evening meal passes without note, though he does not miss the effort the Inquisitor puts into keeping her face a mask of measured, amiable calm. The routine is much the same as always: Dorian picks food from her plate, and she steals his beets with a toothy grin, Sera's barking laughter is overloud under the high ceilings of the dining hall, and Varric's arsenal of stories bolster the conversation above any business matter Josephine or Leliana might drag to the meal. 

The season has turned to late night chill, and the cooks have stoked the fire high, leaving a massive black kettle of cider bubbling away in the mouth of the grand fireplace. Everything is soaked in cinnamon and cloves, and sharp, mouth-watering winter apples, and the scent of roasted meat. Though the hall is full to bursting, he doesn't fail to notice that some enterprising individual has dared to string great swathes of juniper and cedar over the lintels and beams of the hall. 

“Lady Ambassador, are these thanks to your efforts?” Cullen asks, spearing a carrot on the tip of his knife. Josephine gifts him with a lovely smile, a little gleam of anticipation lighting up her eyes.

“Satinalia is one of Antiva's most beloved celebrations, Commander,” she replies, glancing up to the sea of green above their heads, “and we're still putting Skyhold back together, so I thought it would be best to give the people something to look forward to, for all their hard work.”

“Oh, and an entire day and night's worth of drunken carousing has nothing to do with it eh, Scribbles?” Varric says with a leering grin wide enough to drive a herd of druffalo through. 

“Hardly.” Josephine sniffs, though her little smile belies her efforts at keeping a straight face. “Besides, if I don't distract the Inquisitor from her efforts to put every stone in Skyhold back into place herself we'll have to change her title.”

“I can see it now.” Dorian drawls, turning himself towards the Antivan woman and the dwarf beside her. “Put your faith in the Herald of Andraste, the mighty Inquisitor, the finest stonemason in all of Thedas!” 

“If I'm the one who fixes it, does that mean it's mine?” The Inquisitor tosses back, a good-natured leer on her wind-burnt face. “Also, might that be a note of jealousy I hear, cariñu? Does it upset you to know I can lift great stones with a wave of my hands, and you cannot?”

“We've discussed this,” Dorian sniffs, “and somehow you unilaterally decided you were going to, and I believe I'm paraphrasing only a little here, 'take me into the woods, abandon me there and then wait for the earth to teach me a lesson. About dirt'. Or something to that account.” 

The Inquisitor's reply is swept away by Sera's raucous, snorting mirth; her little fists banging on table send the whole company into peals of ungainly laughter.

“Dorian,” Sera howls, “the look on yer face! Dirt.” She parrots, a sour frown pressing her lips together. “Dirt. Oh no, not dirt. Priss.” But her ear to ear smile takes all the sting from her words. “I'd pay good money to see you lost in the woods, I would. I betcha I could bloody charge for the privilege. Make some good copper...”

Dorian holds up a finger, a disapproving note in his reply. “Gold, my friend. You'd charge gold, not coppers.”

The laughter sweeps up like a bright wind, and Cullen throws back his head with the rest of them, until his sides hurt and he has to wipe at his eyes to clear the moisture away. If anyone had asked him a year and a half ago what sort of riches he would have in his life, what, and who he would be grateful for, he would not have been able to give an answer. Here, along the bitterly cold spine of the Frostbacks, he can now happily give such an abundant answer he is a little overwhelmed. And so when the Inquisitor begs off first, with a kiss for Dorian and for Josephine and a warm farewell for the others, Cullen does not care if any take notice of just how quickly he follows behind. 

A chorus of good evenings and one nighty night General Uptight follow at his heels, and when he pushes open the heavy doors of the dining hall, the air crackles brightly in his lungs, stealing a goodly portion of the smoky warmth from the hall; he finds himself with an odd flower of affection under his ribs.

Beneath the resplendent cloak of early evening, Skyhold is painted in searing orange and bold strokes of a deep, ruddy pink; the falling sun turns the high towers into brilliant lances against a cloud woven sky, and the wind carries the ever present sweetness of pine and hearth ash. Whoever once dwelled here must have loved the fortress greatly, because the place seems to soak up the cares and passions of the people who live under its bowers with such ease. This collection of stones is not home, not Honnleath, but it is fast becoming something much closer to home than any other place he has made his bed for nearly fifteen years. It's a strange, almost unsettling feeling – perhaps because it's much more than a growing sense of belonging. 

So much has changed. If he were to meet one of his brother or sister Knights, ones who served and survived with him in Kirkwall but did not follow him to the Inquisition, most would not recognize him. Most certainly, they would not share his opinions. 

The thoughts dog him as he returns to his quarters, bitterly cold now due to the approaching winter season, and they grow louder in the silence as he prepares; he'll not go to the Inquisitor with dirty hands. 

With a clang he sets water to heating, though it takes a good few minutes for him to stoke the fire high enough to warm the kettle; his hands aren't steady enough to shave, but he hasn't the time to be ashamed of that in the moment. 

Does it truly matter, that once he would have branded the Inquisitor a maleficar? Does it matter that he might have hated her as fiercely as he hated the other mages under his care in the first half of the decade after Ferelden? Would he have hated her? Or would she have lit the same fire in him, and the need for her burned him away in its shamefulness? Would he have lashed out at her? 

Maker. Oh Maker, what a terrible thought. 

He shakes his head and picks up the cracked bar of soap he has tucked away in his grooming kit, the repetitive motions easing the fervour of his thoughts. 

Would she have survived long enough to meet him in some other Circle? Or would that great heart of hers, tucked beneath that ever unbowed head, have marked her out for the oblivion of Tranquility long before he might ever have encountered her?

What an unbearable idea that is: an ugly, poisonous canker he cannot stop picking at.

He doesn't have time for poison, not tonight.

The oranges are waiting for him on the shelf, and he chooses the tunic dyed in a luxuriant, currant red – a gift from Josephine in the last weeks of their occupation of Haven – and made with such fine, delicate Antivan stitching. Mostly, it pulls his shoulders straight, and fits to him well enough to display the many years of work he's put into his body. He might be in possession of a certain hesitation, but he would have to have been blind as the Architect himself to have failed to mark the desire in her eyes, or been unmoved by the heat in her lingering touches: such careful, rough-sweet touches always just a shade above impropriety. 

Such a careful game they are playing, save that he has no bolder tongue to ask her for more.

Shaking his head, Cullen gathers up his gift and makes his way to the heart of Skyhold, to the odd, glass and silverite greenhouse his Inquisitor has created for herself. 

The court yard is empty enough for the tread of his boots to echo, and the newly lit watchfires burn with an eerie, hissing crackle; save for the shadows of the guards posted along the battlements, no civilian is present to see the Commander of the Inquisition press his hand to the green glass door and slip inside as soundlessly as a big cat through long grasses. 

Inside the greenhouse it is almost syrupy, and quite warm: a rich, heady fragrance of green, living things, and good, dark earth. 

Skyhold sits on the tooth of a mountain, and Cullen guesses that it must have cost her a pretty sizable chest of gold to cart this dirt here. Or perhaps she moved it here herself? 

Often he doubts if the Inquisitor truly understands how shocking, how frightening, her abilities are to the mere mortals in her company. To shift the earth and the stones and the rivers as if they were playthings, or pieces on a chess board, that is no small thing. No trifling gift from the Maker, is her power to reshape the battlefields they stride across. 

But he must admit it makes fighting by her side an exhilarating venture. He'd never seen an arcane warrior on the field of battle before, and he'll not soon forget the sight.

A tree branch nearly cracks him across the mouth as he wanders through the greenhouse, dazzled by the lush picture unfurling before his eyes. It has only been completed for a handful of hours and already it is full to bursting: trees from all across Ferelden and the Marches, even a pair of fine, fragrant cypress and balsa trees from Rivain. Olive trees from Tevinter. Cherry trees from Antiva. Towering pines from the Storm-Coast. Flowers and herbs growing in a wild, haphazard profusion that most likely makes sense to the hedge mage that sung them to flowering. 

Cullen travels quietly, heart in his throat and palms slick with sweat, until he can spy the back of the greenhouse and the dim, blister like outlines of the watchfires along the battlements. He moves so quietly the Inquisitor does not turn at his approach, and so he is afforded a moment to simply observe her at rest. 

She's hardly ever still. Almost never alone. And yet she's invited his company, asked for him specifically, to share the first hours of her genuine, hard won solitude.

Cullen is entirely unsure what to do with this understanding, but he does appreciate the view.

The Inquisitor is not a small woman – far from it, in fact. She stands taller than most of the men in her company, though the Bull still makes her look like a black banner against a pillar of stone. Then again, he must admit that the Bull makes everyone look like a bird, or a scrap of thread. 

She's clad only in fine black breeches and a delicately embroidered shirt, its voluminous sleeves decorated with spindle sharp mountain flowers and little, red-and-grey birds. A wide, intricately wrapped sash circles her waist – a rich, deep yellow colour he's seen before, on the banner of House Trevelyan decorating the throne room. 

“I do hope you are not insulted, Commander, but I am surprised you accepted my invitation so quickly.” She murmurs, her words soft as silk. “I thought I would need to make several such invitations before you would concede to visit me here.” Her shears clip through the stems of the newly grown dragonthorn branches with practiced ease; the sharp, rhythmic sound serves to quiet the restless energy skittering under her skin. “I confess it is a happy surprise, nonetheless.”

It is only as she turns around that Cullen notices her hair: the length of it falls as if it is a dark, pooling stroke of ink on too white parchment, and it is entirely free of its usual leather and gold twine. 

The sight is as magnificent as Cullen dreamt it to be.

Cullen finds his voice is caught somewhere in his throat, and he must bite his tongue to call it back into his service. She is beautiful. No. Not beautiful, for there is nothing like simple _beauty_ about her, for her face is too sharp, and her features too strong for anything like that. She is nothing less than a figure from the old romances: a proud, straight backed, silver and steel-bright Knight striding out from the pages of his childhood tales with a rakish, sharp-toothed grin on her generous, red mouth. 

“If I may ask?” He croaks, coughing into his hand to clear the burr in his throat. “Why were you surprised, Inquisitor?”

“You've come willingly into the den of a mage, and a place where my power is strongest.” The Inquisitor smiles, a gesture meant with the utmost gentleness. Pointedly, she keeps her teeth behind her lips. “I had thought you might still prefer some manner of caution in my company.”

“No.” Cullen laughs. “Whatever caution I hold in your company, Inquisitor, it is not because you are a mage.” He watches her face like a hawk circling a wide field, its eyes ever on the little heartbeat tucked close to the earth. If he must spend the next few months convincing her that he is not the man she read about in Varric's book, tis a little price to pay. 

“I brought you a gift my Lady, if that is something you'll accept from my hands?”

“A gift?”

“Aye. A little bird told me you have a particular fondness for these items.” Cullen replies. 

A sudden heat unfurls like thick wine in his belly as the Inquisitor's hands close round his, her rough, warm fingers brushing the delicate skin at his wrists. The gleam in her eyes speaks to him of satisfaction: as if some fool has presented her with her most favourite dish, and she is full well determined to have her fill. 

“A little bird from the Northern lands, perhaps?”

Cullen chuckles, his lips twitching up into a little grin. “They tend to roost in the library, my Lady. Sometimes they leave the strangest things just lying about my desk. Only last week, one of these birds brought me a little book of stories from Ostwick.”

The Inquisitor quirks one of her fine, dark brows, smothering her laughter with press of her lips. 

Cullen is only a little bothered that he must look up to see her face, though it does allow him to watch her lips with a delirious closeness. “I rather enjoyed them, and I thought you might also.” He speaks in murmurs, as if they are conspiring together in some private scheme between themselves.

Mercifully, the Inquisitor is more than game to play along, and she leans down just enough to give her thanks to him with her warm breath pressed against his ear. 

“Commander,” she says, mouth still terribly close to the pink shell of Cullen's ear, “shall we sit?”

“I suppose,” is his reply, coloured with just a shade of disappointment. When the Inquisitor's fingers squeeze his wrists every so gently, he cannot be bothered to stop the shiver that reaches to his toes. If he leans ever so slightly into her frame, that is his business entirely.

Above their heads are a half dozen gold-as-honey witchlights, and they tinkle softly in the breeze coming in from the single open window pane high in the roof of the greenhouse; beside her blackwood alchemy bench is a little table, a steaming tea pot, a bottle of wine, and two odd looking chairs. 

“You'll have to forgive my lack of decorum, Commander. I was unsure if your comfort would be better served with wine, or a good, black tea. Tis nearly Satinalia, and some prefer to be moderate afore the wild night is upon them.” She gestures for Cullen to take a seat, and she falls into her chair with an audible sigh, his beautifully wrapped gift nestled in her lap. 

“Is the wine Antivan or Tevinter?” Cullen asks. He knots his fingers together and is surprised to find that the chair is capable of taking his full weight. Well, if the Inquisitor can stretch out in such a flimsy looking chair, so can he – perhaps it will take the sharpness out of his lungs. He wants to fiddle, to scoop up one of the delicate looking blue glass goblets she's put on the table just to give himself some distraction. Anything to ease this mad flutter in his stomach. “I must confess I haven't much tolerance for wine, especially the ones from Tevinter. I may not be a Templar anymore, but a soldier learns to drink whatever they can get their hands on, and its not often something so fine as a vintage from several hundred leagues away.”

“Antivan, much to that little Northern bird's disappointment,” the Inquisitor laughs.

“That will do nicely. My thanks.”

The Inquisitor scoops up the dark green bottle and pours a generous portion into the delicate looking cups she'd brought out of the chest her mother sent all those months ago. “When we first settled in Skyhold, my mother sent me these. Said she was tired of wondering how dreadfully I was entertaining the people seeking our aid.”

“Did she?” Cullen asks, all too eager to have whatever knowledge of the home she hailed from along Ostwick's shores. “Do you have much from your home in the Marches?”

“My mother and I have been apart for many years, and if either of us were so inclined to sentiment, we would admit it has been hard to be so distant from each other. My father is entirely the opposite.” The Inquisitor smiles, a quiet fondness settling into her gaze. “He is more than happy to let me know how little he likes that I am so long gone from our home. Alas, there was hardly any choice in that.” They have spoken of this, of her home, before, and still it remains a difficult thing for her to share.

“Where is your home, Commander?”

Cullen must think for a moment, whether or not she will regard him poorly for the fact that he has not returned home in such a great number of years he is unsure if his childhood home still stands. “In Honnleath,” he begins with a sigh, grateful to have the wine glass to clutch to his chest, “which is a very ordinary, very quiet village in Ferelden.”

“Do you miss the place you grew up in?” Her question is earnest, and given over with a twitch of a smile. “Do you long for the haunts of your childhood? Those familiar, wide Ferelden fields? That quiet hearth?” 

“I haven't been home since I was thirteen years old.” There, he's said it, and now she'll either pick at it, or leave it be as best she can. Most pick at it.

“In that we are quite similar, I am afraid,” she admits. The hurt is too old, and too much given with love at its centre to cut her deeper than it did all those years ago.

“I was under the impression you came to us from your family's holdings in Ostwick. You were sent as a delegate under your House's banner.” The days before the Breach tore open the sky have become a blur: a dull, red-edged gasp waiting on the edge of fire and destruction. In the days after the Breach, well, he'd not like to visit those long weeks of mistrust again, not for all the coin in Thedas.

“My circumstances were not quite so simple as that,” the Inquisitor replies. 

“Oh?” In the privacy of his own thoughts, Cullen is more than willing to admit has has been most curious about her, about her early days, about the land she hails from and the family that sheltered her, and he'll happily accept whatever she is willing to share.

“How much do you know of the Circle in Ostwick, Commander?”

Cullen finds himself suddenly hot, his breath stilling in his chest. “I do not know much my lady, and until you informed us, I was unaware of its history of brutality in the years leading to its fall. Never mind that the Templars stationed there invoked the Rite.”

The Inquisitor's smile is thin as a knife's edge, and just as cutting. “My parents love me very much, and for many, many years they thought I would be their only child. My father could not abide the thought of allowing the Templars to take me to the Circle. He knew how terribly the mages were treated there, and being from the lands in Antiva closest to Rivain, he is much less inclined to devotion than my mother is.”

“I must admit, I had wondered how your parents managed to keep you hidden. Noble children aren't known for leading quiet lives.” There is a creeping sorrow easing into Cullen's bones, and he cannot pin it down long enough to chase it away. “And you are not a quiet woman.”

At his words, the Inquisitor gives a mighty clap of laughter, splashing wine over her fingers in her mirth. “No, Commander, you are very right.” She sets her cup down and licks her fingers clean before picking up the threads of her childhood. “When I was seven summers old it became clear to my parents that my magic would not be contained to simple party tricks, and they decided to send me far to the north, to a mountain region in the Minater River's path. To an old fortress maintained by my uncle Llorenç, who is my father's brother. But that is a long, long story.”

“I should like to hear it, my Lady.” He's not sure where his courage is bubbling up from, but if it's the wine, he'll write Josephine a thank you in his own hand. 

“I'm afraid its not an entirely happy tale, Commander.”

“Perhaps another night, Inquisitor?” 

The Inquisitor meets his gaze, and she is not quite fast enough to smother the surprise that unfurls in the storm of her grey eyes. 

“I think so, Commander. Though you have not spoken much tonight.”

“Ah,” Cullen demurs, catching his tongue between his teeth, “sadly you already know much of the uglier years in my life. I do not enjoy speaking of Kirkwall, and the man I was in that city would be loathsome to you, I'm afraid.”

The Inquisitor leans back in her chair, a deep breath easing out of her powerful chest. “We have only been familiar with each other for a short while, Commander, but I must admit it is most difficult reconcile the man I read about in Varric's book with the man who sits before me.”

“Then I will be plain with you, Inquisitor.” Cullen answers: “I have not managed to read much of that book. How, how much of my behaviour in the Circle are you aware of, Inquisitor?” If this is the sword he must throw himself upon he would do it now, if only to spare himself the wound at a later, perhaps more damaging hour.

“Varric was not entirely kind. You took the Champion's sister from her home, and from what I understand, were quite supportive of your Knight-Commander's policy regarding the inflicting of Tranquility. The man in that book,” the Inquisitor sighs, her face drawn and closed tight, “that man was angry, bitter, hateful.”

_How dare you bring yourself before her? How dare you ask her to care for you, after you have done nothing to be worthy of such a gift. Did you truly believe a woman like her could ever deign to care for a man like you? A man who would have pressed that sunburst brand to her forehead with a smile, not even three years gone from this hour?_

Cullen knows that voice, and it is built of sparking, bruise-coloured violet. That voice wears horns, and a mage girl's face; that voice sleeps beside him, sings to him, burns in his heart like veilfire. 

He'll never be rid of it's taste.

Without thinking, Cullen jumps up as if burnt, stammering. “I should not have – forgive me.” He should leave, and leave now, quickly, before this becomes any worse.

“Sit.”

Cullen stills, his eyes searching out hers under the honeyed glow of the lanterns.

“This is not a request, Commander.” 

Her tongue is steel, but her gaze is full of a shocking gentleness. 

“Sit. Right now.”

He sinks back into the plush chair, knots his fingers together and wills the shame and the fear out of his lungs. The Inquisitor leans forward, hands dangling between her knees; her gaze is hawkish now, and very quiet.

“Fear is an animal, remember. Fear makes us do terrible things. Turns us into people we cannot, or will not recognize. You know this. I know this. Intimately.” 

Cullen nods, and manages to draw in a thin thread of air between clenched teeth.

“If you believe I am going to turn you away, you are wrong.” The Inquisitor shakes her head, the river of her hair shifting like thick seaweed under the restless motions of the sea; her smile is tight, and nearly bruising. “Understand, if I thought you were the same man as I found in that book, you would have been sent away months ago. If you had shown me but half that venom I found in those pages, I would have cut you down myself.”

He cannot quite keep back the low, sharp whine that falls from his lips.

“When I was twenty, my cousin and I were traveling deep in the wilds, along the border of Ferelden and Orlais. The Blight had only ended two years ago, and the whole of Thedas was still in turmoil. We encountered a band of Templars.”

“Maker.” Cullen breathes, already feeling a quiet dread pressing down on him.

“The odds were not good, and I was reckless. They'd seen me casting. To those men, we were nothing but two stupid younglings, both likely apostates, practically alone in a deep, dark wood.” Her tongue stills, and the memory rises under her skin with a cold, unfurling rage. “I killed them. All six of them. But not before the last dog standing managed to pin me down and cut me open. Cut Andraste's flaming sword into my torso like a brand, and then stuck the point in my guts for good measure. My cousin thought I was going to die. I thought I was going to die. I'd never met such cruelty. Such pointless, senseless cruelty.”

“My lady,” he gasps, a wrenching thing built wholly of pain, and regret. Nothing, nothing in all the Maker's workings could pry from his lips the words that lurk in his heart: 'I was not so different once. I would have done what those beasts did. Save for the sword, I would have crashed through that forest, and you would have watered the earth with my blood. And you would have been right to do so.'

“Whose crime is greater?” She asks, mouth full of tinkling glass. “Theirs? Mine? Did they need to die? Am I absolved of my sin, my murderer's heart, because it was in my own defence?”

“What sort of question is that, my lady?” Cullen bellows, hollowed by the force of his denial of her guilt; the wine cup in his hands gives an ominous squeal; his fingers have curled around it tight enough to crush. 

If she cannot be good, cannot be more, than how can he? 

“How can you call yourself a murderer, when you did nothing more than act to save your own life?” His answers are built like nails, only he isn't sure what he is hammering them into. Or why. If her frown is any answer, his words are not what she is searching for. He tries again. Pushes on. 

“Those men, dogs, gave you no other choice.” And then, with savage clarity, a few old, familiar words come roaring back to him: words about dogs, and a master's cruel hands, and he must curl his palm over mouth to keep the shock from his lips.

_The dog's choice, well, that was only an illusion._

“Be honest with me, Commander.” The Inquisitor murmurs, her gaze poised between gentleness and iron. “This place is my safety. It may be yours as well, should you wish for such a thing.”

Cullen squares his shoulders, and, for a moment, thinks to laugh. What an odd pair they make: a battered, broken Templar and a wild, fearsome apostate, both reaching for answers in the other's ugly past. Mirrors, ever reflecting, ever catching some strange, distorted picture only the other can see. Or perhaps it is not distorted, and they are each being treated to the other's truth.

“My lady, I do not know if you are absolved.” Even as he speaks, Cullen hates the words that fall from his lips: they are wages he had not wished to pay. “Would someone beyond these walls condemn you for your actions? Call you a beast and put a sword through your heart?” A shudder creeps up his throat, kisses his lips with a familiar bitterness. “Yes. Of course they would. Would one of the mages who survived the fall of Kirkwall's Circle be more than happy to watch me hang? Yes. Of course they would.”

“No one is wholly good, Commander. No one, not even Andraste Herself, is permitted to leave this life with no mark on their hearts.” Her laughter is a surprise, even to her own mouth. “Do you know what they say in Tevinter?” She questions, leaning her taller frame near again, as if to impart her little secret with a greater portion of ease: “'Call no man happy till he be dead. Call no man good till the the scholar scribbles his sins in the marginalia of some other fool's history.' I happen to agree.”

“What, what is it you are saying, exactly, my lady?” Cullen tells himself he is not terrified of her answer.

“You have scaled mountains as if they were gentle hills. Most would not have bothered.”

Cullen feels his cheeks heat, the flush of warmth spreading down to his neck and chest. “You truly give me too much kindness. I have a long way to go yet.”

“That you cared enough to try – that you opened your own eyes, even under the banners of the City of Chains - speaks louder than any other action, Commander. You could have continued on your merry way, cared not a wit for the mages under your charge. You could have ignored Meredith's madness in its entirety. Chosen to play the fool, and pretended her cruelty was not so naked that you could avert your face and live cleanly within yourself afterwards.”

The Inquisitor's voice pushes through his chest, knocks against him like the great, resonant bells of the White Spire; he shivers in her wake. A summons. To worship. To prayer. To lift his voice and his sword for his own reasons, and hers. And oh but he wants nothing more than to _answer_. 

“It is no easy task, my lady. Living with myself. Not after the life I have led. The choices I have made.” Cullen laments, unwinding his fingers and flattening his palms, though he is sweating, and altogether too cold for his comfort. He pauses, picks up his breathing in neat, measured portions of time as if he were collecting the pieces of a shattered cup. “I feel as if I've just walked through fire. Was that a test, Inquisitor?”

“You are an exacting man, Commander,” the Inquisitor returns with a chuckle, voice as rich and dark as newly wetted earth, “but I respect whatever challenge you have set for yourself. Tis no small thing, wrestling with the people we used to be.” At that she drags a hand down her face as if to scrub her words away. “Also, please stop calling me 'my lady'. No one calls me that, not even my own cousin.”

Not for the first time, Cullen realizes that he nearly does not know her name. He's heard it in distant conversations, and only a handful of times when he's stumbled across the Inquisitor and Dorian conversing quietly in the library. It's an odd name, full of that curious, northern Marcher lilt.

The Inquisitor laughs, a sudden spark of humour lighting up her handsome face. “I know what you're thinking, Commander. You're thinking: 'However will I remember how to say that damn thing, and what in the name of the Maker is that strange little dash above the e for? Damn Marchers and their oddities'. That about right?”

Cullen desperately wants to plunge his head into the nearest bucket of ice water – anything to get rid of this ridiculous colour on his face. “Something like that, Inquisitor.” She is so very, very charming; she is so very good at dispelling the shadows, and the fear, and the shame that crowd round like ugly, choking weeds each time they try to speak to one another. 

“Repeat after me, Commander,” she begins, lips pulled up in a merry, merciless grin, “I promise to be gentle.” 

Cullen chuckles, but the sound is closer to a strangled twitter.

“Mirèio.”

“Mireo?” The laughter is easy, light as a breeze; somehow, the lightness of it frightens him. When last did he have so many varied reasons fine enough to laugh? 

“Not quiet.” She sighs, a crooked grin twisting up her quicksilver mouth. “But alas, we can't all be from the rocky shores of castell Trevelyan.”

“Again then, Inquisitor? Until I get it right.” This is ridiculous, but he'd not trade it for a sack of gold, nor a cart of steel. She spends her time with him as if she is afraid to run out of coin, always keeping her toes just over the quiet, frustrating little line drawn in the sand by some unknown hand, for some unknown reason. 

Of course, he cannot forget how poorly their circling round each other began – when he'd been just another hostile mage-killer in her eyes. Templar: that is what her suddenly narrowed eyes spoke to him, upon their first meeting. Worse still had been his hand falling on the pommel of his sword just as 'mage' left Cassandra's lips; her face had snapped shut as if he'd fed something soft into a vicious trap. 

But yet, as he has learned, 'mage' is not the full truth, not in anything approaching honesty. 

It's almost unheard of, a noble family willing to risk so much to give their child a life of freedom. To his knowledge he has heard of no other southern House being quite so bound and determined to keep their fierce, headstrong first-born from the groaning towers men of his ilk kept safe, and above all else – separate. House Trevelyan had a history of devotion to the Chantry, and to risk fortune, name and title on such a dangerous venture? That is a species of bravery Cullen hasn't encountered in quite some time. 

“Try this.” She replies, one finger tapping against her lips, humour sharp as a blade in her slate-grey eyes. “Mii,” she punctuates, her odd dialect turning her tongue to honey in his ears, “rey,” a gesture, as if pulling the syllables from her mouth like strands of Orlesian caramel, “yho.”

“Mirèio.” 

Her laughter rings deep and bright, nothing genteel or crafted, but strong and utterly bare of anything save joy in the act itself. Laughter for the sake of laughter. 

“A jaunty rogue from Ostwick, that's what you are, my lady.” Cullen finds the words come easily, or at least with more ease than upon previous occasions. 

“Lady again?” Mirèio chides, flashing out her hand to knock into the former templar's ribs. 

Cullen grunts, the speed of her strike not quite fast enough to crack the grin from his lips. A gentle nudge from the Inquisitor is very like receiving a love-tap from a Ferelden bear: no real intent to hurt, but a stinging blow nonetheless. Just a bit of play, only the bear never remembers how strong it is, even in the company of wolves. 

“What is this 'lady' you speak of? I may be from and old and dusty line of nobles, ser, but I am no lady. Teryn-Ascendant is what I am. A peasant lord, master of a castell and many, many hundreds of leagues of dirt and rock, and a great many sheep. Oh, and fine little fleet of ships.”

“What?” Cullen parries back, a sudden abandon catching him up and loosening his tongue. “Then who have I been having such a delightful conversation with? Since you do not like Messere, never mind Inquisitor. What, pray tell, might I call you?”

With all the speed of a hawk descending on a little, beating heart, a sharpness as finely pointed as a blade replaces her bright and easy mirth. 

“My name, Commander. Nothing less than that. Nothing more.”

The breath dies in his throat.

“For now,” she adds with a toothsome grin: red in edge and intent.

Cullen finds his words have flown, escaped from his open mouth like birds from a cage, and he is left a fool under her steel-bright gaze. There is a question in those eyes. A question he cannot, and will not answer in this moment. But he can give her something in return.

“Cullen.” He replies, utterly unconcerned with his own unfurling grin. “You shall be Mirèio, and I shall be Cullen. At least here,” he gestures round them, to the verdant, full to bursting garden and the green glass nearly choked by creeping vines, “where we need not be concerned with titles.”

“That suits me well.”

“Aye?” He laughs. The sound is easier now, not quite so strained, nor so cutting.

“Aye, joli. For now.”

“I beg your pardon, Mirèio?”

A sudden, winter-brittle wind brings him her scent: oranges, bitter herbs and cold, black earth – perhaps even a little salt. Something remaining of her home along the sheer cliffs of Ostwick? Her sprawling, windswept cradle, and the land she will return to when this war is concluded. 

Oddly enough, the thought does not sit well with him – not any longer.

He does not care to examine it any further. 

“Another time, Cullen. Another time.” 

When she opens her gift, he remembers the desert he has passed through, and just how badly he would like to throw himself face first into the welcoming water, and drink until he forgets the meaning of thirst. 

“Oranges?” She laughs, and suddenly she is as soft as a woman of her mettle can be. 

“Oranges,” he answers. He cannot help but wonder what his face looks like to her, and he would dearly love for her to tell him.

“Well,” Mirèio sighs, resting her sharp chin in the palm of her hand, eyes bright and focused on the man before her, “since you have given me a gift, would you accept one from my hands?”

His smile runs ahead of his words, and Cullen inclines his head, whether in deference or acquiescence he is wholly unsure. “Anything you would give, I would be happy to have.”

“Whatever is haunting you, Cullen, whatever it is that makes you shake like a leaf even when you sit beside that great fire in the dining hall, you may find respite from it here. The door will open to you, and to you alone. Should you wish it, this garden will shelter you, as it does me.”

And for her kindness, he has no reply. Her face tells him he need not give her one. His quiet acceptance is reward enough.


	5. Yet may I by no means my wearied mind Draw from the deer,

~ *~

Satinalia dawns in a sea of white, bitterly cold snow - the first frost of the coming winter - and Skyhold has erupted into a flurry of civilians, soldiers and visiting nobles alike all merrily cavorting through the halls as evening approaches; in the great hall the throne has been carted away and several dozen long tables have been piled in to accommodate the approaching sea of revelers. Josephine has drafted the weavers to craft and string wide, burgundy banners across the length of the ceiling, and her juniper and cedar bundles turn the cavernous room into a forest of sweet smelling bowers and curtains.

Above her head Mirèio examines the lovely, gently swaying decorations, and is surprised to see that her Lady Ambassador has left her bear and hart upon the back wall. The yellow banner looks out of place nestled amongst all these fine, carefully constructed pieces. 

“Josephine?” She calls, searching round for the Antivan woman. “Mi princesa?”

“Yes, Inquisitor?” Josephine replies, her shoes ringing on the stone steps like little copper coins. “Is there something I can assist you with?”

“You left the banner of my House in the Hall. Did you not want the decorations to match one another? The yellow stands out like a beacon.” She frowns, tugging at one of the little braids hanging down by her cheek. “And you've done such a magnificent job, it's quite astonishing.”

“Please,” Josephine hums, tapping her pen against the other woman's forehead, “surely you must know I do nothing without reason, Lady Mirèio.”

“Aye,” Mirèio drawls, a cautious note on her tongue, “perhaps I am overly distracted, princesa, but your point is lost on me today. Take pity and tell me.”

“Skyhold is hosting,” she thumbs through the rustling parchment clipped to her board with dazzling efficiency, the tip of her tongue held between sweet, upturned lips, “forty seven Orlesian noble guests, all eager to see the fortress of the woman seeking an invitation to Halamshiral come the New Year. There are ten Arls and their consorts, thirty nobles from Ferelden, including six Banns.”

“Princesa,” the Inquisitor mutters, concern wicking to life like a candle freshly lit, “what have you done?”

“My friend you are not just the Inquisitor. You are the heir of House Trevelyan, and this is as much a branch of your family's power as Ostwick and Montjuïc.”

“Josephine!”

“The Houses of Ferelden, Antiva, Orlais and the Marches must see your heraldry the moment they step into the Hall, my Lady Trevelyan, so they do not forget that your House stands strong and fast to the side of our most righteous Inquisition. So that,” Josephine pauses, voice turning low and quiet in the din of the brightly decorated hall, “there can be no questions of acting upon the fact that House Trevelyan harboured an apostate for nearly twenty-two of your twenty-eight years.”

“Shite,” the Inquisitor mutters.

“Yes. My thoughts exactly.”

“You are a ruthless, brutally efficient tactician, princesa.” Leaning close, Mirèio waits until the other woman lifts her face up, cheeks pink in the burnished sunlight, and presses a kiss to the corner of her mouth. “And such an unexpected gift.”

“Perhaps you will thank me even further, Inquisitor, if I told you our brave Commander has made it clear he will not be attending tonight's festivities?”

Mirèio finds a sudden frown on her face, whatever warmth she'd just gathered up scattered to the wind by Josephine's words. “Whyever not?”

“I must confess I do not know, but it would be a great shame if he kept himself away. This is our first chance to make an impression upon the circles we will increasingly be forced to move through. His presence is as vital as yours or mine. Or even Sera's.”

“Sera will keep these dogs in line, princesa, so I do hope she will attend. I think she'll enjoy taking the piss out of every last one of these fools, and I will thoroughly enjoy watching her do it.”

Josephine smiles from ear to ear, her laughter chimes like little, merry beads, and says: “the last I saw of Commander Cullen, he was hunched over the map in the war room. Perhaps you should start there, Mirèio.”

With a sharp nod, and any even sharper grin, Mirèio stalks away. By the time she reaches the outer hall leading to the war room, the only sound is the skittering susurus of her long black tunic, its gold-thread vines and ruby red pomegranates glittering in the guttering torchlight, and her sword jangling brightly at her hip. 

She'll not allow the man to hide himself away, not tonight. Some invisible, awful _thing_ has left great, livid bruises across her Commander's arrow-straight frame, and she will not leave him to wallow in silence, whatever his reasons might be. His hands shook so terribly this morning, and he would not touch the tea she brought him until her back had been turned to him. Only the dimmest of fools could have missed the rattle of porcelain in unsteady hands.

He still uses her cup, so at least she has that small comfort.

Enough is enough, and she'll not dance around him while he falls apart under her over-cautious gaze. 

Her boots are terribly loud in the empty hallway leading to the war-room, and the noise calls up a strange, poorly felt hesitation. But, as always, she will not abide by its claws. 

Of all the many faces she wears, _coward_ is not one of them.

In no time at all she reaches the cedar and juniper strung archway, and in the thin, dust-choked thread of light spilling out from the half open door she finds she must pause for a moment. She tells herself it is to collect her finer emotions before crashing into the fray. 

Perhaps thinking of this as a battle invites disaster, but there's no time for a steadier hand, not now. She has kept her tongue between her teeth with an admirable constancy, and this may be why he has not asked for more, has not been as sure of step as she has kept herself. 

If her stillness has been misread, Cullen may need somewhat of a more _obvious_ invitation.

Or perhaps he will finally tell her what manner of sickness so often falls over his body like a funeral shroud. 

With the tip of her boot, she eases open the heavy door and moves quietly into the war-room; candle wax has spilled down in thick red threads from the splayed tree root chandelier, and the rhythmic hiss of new wax kissing table, stone, and paper alike is almost hypnotic. 

Beneath the shadows of the tree, Cullen is leaning over the unfurled map with his chin tucked close to his chest. There is a little bronze eagle in his hands, and it appears as if he is seeking to parse out some secret from the glint of unfurled wings. But, to Mirèio's eye, the mindless fiddling only serves to shrink him, makes him appear small and alone in a sea of maps and dust and silence. 

Under the harsh lines of fading sunlight, Cullen is painted in red and burnished gold: a heavy handed smearing of colour that turns him into a thing of unbearable loveliness; she finds she has had her fill of swallowing down the desire to tell him as much. And yet there is something hunted in the hard lines around his face – even from the shadows hung round the portal she can see how deeply he's buried himself behind that high stone wall he worships with such fervent constancy.

Andraste's Mercy but it looks as if he is being chased by an all too familiar animal, between whose teeth he is desperate not to lose so much as a single drop of blood.

“Cullen,” she summons. Even to her own ears, her voice breaks the silence like a clarion bell suddenly struck. 

The man jumps, a soft noise held between his teeth, and raises his head.

“Inquisitor?”

“No.”

Cullen tries to give her a smile but the motion is poorly felt, and so it falls away with ease. 

“Mirèio.”

Under the vivid green bowers and sputtering candle-light, she waits framed in the spider silk motes at the mouth of the door. She is as still as ever: a tall, unbending stone tower forever untouched by the winds and the rains. Held in the sickle bright curve of her mouth is sharpness and fire, and a wicked promise.

“I am not a woman accustomed to patience in the face of my desires, Cullen.”

The little eagle in his hands slips from his suddenly numb fingers, clattering loudly across the map table. The ensuing silence is built like her mouth: sharp-toothed and all too full of whispers. Promises freshly unearthed, and shining in their newness. 

“I am not one to endlessly dance around my desires as if they were unfamiliar to me. As if I do not know _precisely_ what it is I am pursuing.” Her gaze narrows, artfully painted lids hooded over thunderous grey, and her lips curl up like parchment touched to flame. “This circling, this caution – it feels as if I am become a strange manner of hunter, ever chasing a hart through a very dark, very dangerous forrest.” 

_Oh._ Cullen's heart begins to race, running ahead of his breath with a cruel, merciless ease. _Oh Maker._

There are fragile, terribly fragile words on his tongue – words that have been perching there for many, many weeks – and still he cannot find the will needed to divest himself of their little, impossible hope. The memory of that sunburst brand held in steady hands will not leave him. Kirkwall will not let him sleep, and neither will Kinloch. Nor will the man with the sharp, hateful eyes: the one who wears his face, and knows his heart, and remembers what it felt like to be needlessly _cruel_. To stand in the face of so much suffering, and be _unmoved_.

She may have asked him of his past, but he hadn't told her how many mages he'd made Tranquil, how many he had allowed to be punished, injured, or placed into dreadful, unrelenting solitary confinement for actions that would not have merited such treatment if the person were now his, and the Inquisition's, most ardent enemies. 

There has been no breath enough in him to speak to her of his weeks in the tower, wading alone through a sea of blood and echoing halls. No words fine enough to tell of how he lays down at night with claws in his back, with the taste of blood on his tongue, or of just how violently he loathes violet, and purple, and plum. Even when it drapes her magnificent frame, the first sight of it never fails to make him flinch. 

He hasn't even told her of the lyrium.

His hands should not touch her, hers should not touch him. He will ruin her, and she will learn to hate him for it. As surely as the day is long, and his blood is red.

She would not be stood here before him if she knew but half the ugliness hidden away under his skin. He is so sure, so very sure that little truth.

But oh. 

And yet.

He wants this.

Anything. Anything she will give. 

_Oh Maker, but he wants._

He meets her gaze and that familiar road-dust and dragon-blood sword slides effortlessly into his innards.

From a red, wolfish mouth: _Do you like it?_

“Does the hart run because it is afraid?” Her voice is smoke and upturned earth, and its shiver wraps round his throat with a sweet, welcome pressure. 

“No.” He breathes. “No, not afraid. Never that.”

She cocks her head as if pressing her ear to the dirt to better hear the tread of her quarry. 

“Not of you,” Cullen muddles on, “but for you. There is a difference.” His teeth close around the last word, and he thinks to shake it pieces, but he does not wish to have her see, see what shadows he is still keeping so close to his heart. They are not the comfort he should be clinging to, but he cannot let them go. It is slowly driving him mad, but he cannot let go – after all, it's the only stone he has left. He does not know how to live without it. 

She is still standing in the doorway, hands clasped behind her back. He looks down to her feet, and a sea of curling vines and ruby seeded pomegranates greets him. Just like his cup. Her cup. 

His eyes widen, and something falls neatly into place.

“The days of fear and mistrust in your company went to rot many months ago, Cullen.” 

Cullen finds he must swallow past a blister of sudden, choking warmth; heat sinks into his belly, touches his eyes with a prickling moisture. 

“Does the hart run because it does not know if it wishes to be caught? Does the hart think its capture _shameful_?” 

She is so much iron and fire: a king wrapped in black and ruby red and in need of no crown finer than her own gold twine. And oh but he wants nothing more than for her to push him down and pull the broken things from his chest with her steady, burning hands. Beg her to examine each twisted, blackened piece one by one, and break each neatly in those same hands. Scatter the ashes to the wind.

Yes. Yes he is ashamed. 

Men like him should not want their woman to put them on their backs, knees splayed wide and wrists bound by the strength of leather, and their woman's hands. They should long to have that woman take from them whatever it is that woman might desire. They should not flush hotly at the thought of their woman's lips made rough with need, ungentle teeth on the thin skin of their neck, sure fingers digging into hips and thighs in search of drawing sweeter music from a red, open mouth. 

“I should not want as I want, Mirèio.” And it is as if, in one swift blow, he has surrendered for a reason that lives separate and apart from the truth in his heart. He had wanted his knees to touch the tips of her boots, not the cold tower of his own fear.

“Ah,” the woman sighs, drawing the sound through her lips as if it is an unpleasant taste she is eager to be rid of, “so it is _shame_ that drives the hart to running.” 

Cullen cannot bear the disappointment in her eyes, for now their light is hard, and far, far away.

“Is this because of what makes you shake, Cullen?” Her question is fair, and she has not left the field of battle just yet. 

“No!” falls between them like a stone. Cullen must still his hand to keep from reaching out to her, though a table and a thousand bitter things knot sharply between them. “Not that. It is. Truly it is. It is that. How do I?”

“Ask,” Mirèio growls, patience wearing thin, and thinner still. “Decide what it is you want from me, Cullen. Decide. And then _ask_ me for it.”

“I.” He breathes, and he finds he is staring down at his own hand, gloved fingers curling mindlessly over his palm. “I cannot...” 

“There is nothing in me that would deny you. Be assured of that.”

His head jerks up sharply as if someone has just taken his chin in their grip and tugged him free of a familiar task: that is, as always, the careful guarding of his own misery. 

Mirèio gives her mouth free reign, and the wolfish points of her teeth speak in a louder voice than even her burning gaze. “I know what I want from you, joli. That is not at question here. Bold as I am, I believe you desire as I do. But there is no safety in silence, and I would have more than crude fumbling between us.” 

She laughs – a thick curl of dark, tinkling desire – and Cullen must ball his fingers into fists to keep himself anchored under the sudden, too-sharp burn of _need_ that spreads itself across his frame. 

“But you must make that choice for yourself. I cannot give you anything if you do not tell me _how_.”

A mage. A stone tower. A holy woman come down from between the teeth of a mountain. A proud-hearted Teryn from a high, yellow-bannered House. A knight in gleaming armour, with a sword as bright as a clap of thunder against a dark sky. A black banner against a burning wheel of stars.

A leader.

A friend.

A lover. 

That is what she is.

The last is what she might be. 

And that is what he wants.

He has been so very alone, for so very many years. He is tired. Lost. Still floundering towards a distant shore. Still madly scrambling to claw back all the good, bright things he'd wanted from his life into his own possession – only he has so few good things left, and there is not enough to fill the red wounds under his ribs. Not nearly enough. 

Maker, but he is so very tired of of all his jangling little pieces making him rattle like an old, care-worn toy solider. 

“Cullen, if you are not ready, there is no shame in that,” Mirèio urges. “Perhaps I have not been as forthcoming as I should have been with the history of my bed, but it is rather apparent my life has given me more freedom than yours to explore it.” That earns her a derisive little snort, but she smiles through his protest; she knows she's right. “Whether it is that you are not ready, or that you will never be ready, you will not find yourself suddenly alone. If your answer is that you want nothing from me, I will still be your friend.”

“Stop. Please.”

Her grin snuffs out.

“Do not make excuses for me, Mirèio. I will not abide that from you, you who has shown such care for a man very much unworthy of receiving it.” He's only a little proud of how steady he manages to hold his voice.

The bear stood before him makes a low, unhappy noise.

“I am not afraid. Not of you. It is only that I have not ever cared for someone, anyone, enough to have what I truly wanted from them. If you do not. I must – ” 

“Tell me what you want.” 

The breath that rattles out of his lungs is long, as if he is steeling himself for a great fall that will only end in his red mess being cast over pointed rocks. 

“Come closer, please.”

“As you wish.”

Mirèio moves softly, swiftly – a dark shadow bleeding through thick, green cover – her silent tread digging vicious claws into Cullen's guts. _Predator_ is what the curled line of her shoulders whispers to him, and it makes his mouth water, face suddenly tight with heat. 

She stops before the table and he knows a sudden, obliterating disappointment – until her long, scarred fingers brush across the yellow sash at her waist and the singular sound in the room is the creaking of leather. She pulls and then there is only the silver'd bristling of a sword being placed on the sprawling table.

Cullen must breathe through his nose; he puts his hands flat against the wood, leans on the oak with all his weight as she circles near. If he ran now, would she take up the chase? Would his running be only to see her reach? 

His blood pounds in his ears so loudly he can hardly hear the soft, purposeful tread of her boots. In a blink she is at his side, her scent under his nose. Then at his back, her heat on his neck, at his shoulders. His scalp prickles, and his eyes fall shut of their own accord, a slick, eager heat clipping his breath to pieces.

Caught in the bristle of her aura against his skin, his breath comes in louder than it should - as if he has been forced to run a mile in full plate. He breathes in deep, haphazard gasps that leave his mouth with too much fire: too-red coals burning in his throat, on his tongue, hot enough to make him shake. 

_Touch me. In the name of the Maker, fucking touch me!_

His thoughts turn dizzying: blunt, unwieldy needs that bleed into one another in a maddening tangle of a hundred nights spent angry with himself for falling into an uneasy sleep with the image of her arms closing around, her leg over the point of his hip, hands hot on the back of his neck, nails curling sharply in his sweat-damp hair. Her tongue and the rough music of her skin. His steady hands as he pulled gold rope from the sea of her black-banner hair. 

From her greater height, Mirèio watches the skittering of gooseflesh across Cullen's neck with each breath she takes so close to his skin. His hair is such a lovely shade of blonde, and he wears such enticing peach and honeysuckle colour on his fair skin:so many sweet colours just waiting for the brush of her mouth. She wants nothing more than to dip her tongue into each one, and paint new ones in their place. 

Inch by careful inch, Mirèio draws closer, her heart beating furiously in tandem with Cullen's harsh, galloping breath. Her lips curl up, gently brush against the delicate shell of Cullen's ear. 

He jolts, and she breathes: “Speak.”

“Touch me,” leaves his lips on red, gleaming hooks, “please.”

“Where?” She leans in, sudden and sharp, powerful torso pressing seamlessly to his back with every ounce of strength she has. The gasp she tears from him is sweeter than any wine, finer than any pretty trinket: a thick, intoxicating music she wants to pull from his lips with her teeth. “Open your mouth and tell me.” 

Cullen feels himself waver, knees turning to sand as Mirèio presses against him with all her formidable weight; the table creaks ominously under his trembling hands, and heat not unlike drunkenness seeps into his bones. She is waiting for his answer, her breath coursing over the nape of his neck with an un-gentle fire, lips still against his ear. It's maddening. She is maddening. She will not move. Will not be moved. 

“Anywhere.” He chokes, hisses. “Anywhere.”

Mirèio sighs, pushes forward until Cullen bends ever so slightly, and eases her hands down his arms until her fingers are covering his and her mouth is pressed to the hammer of his pulse. She draws back her lips and oh so gently, softly, lets him feel her teeth against his heartbeat. She gives him a fraction of a gasp of breath and then she bites down, pulls the delicate skin between her lips. He groans, sagging against her.

He'll wear a new colour come the dawn.

“Easy now,” she chuckles, mouthing her words against his skin: salt and clove-scented soap, mixed with the faintest taste of ash from the forges at the foot of the training yard, and beneath that is the bitter tang of his silverite and steel plackart. Delightful. 

“That mouth of yours makes such fine music, joli,” Mirèio murmurs, dragging her lips up and across the sharp line of Cullen's jaw, each word a little kiss of teeth until he must lean against her; until he's tilted his head back, and brought her his lips. The line of his exposed neck is a thing of exquisite temptation: a bountiful, milk and honey altar, naked and waiting for the red lines of her nails. “I wonder that you do not use it more often.” 

Cullen breathes against her, and she against him, every harsh draw of air echoing between their bodies; every little, half-bitten growl; every little motion of her fingers curled around his. Her lips are so close, waiting just at the corner of his mouth. 

Waiting. 

She rocks him forward, rakes her hand up his frame until he can feel the callused pads of her fingers at the hollow of his throat. He hisses, low and soft, as her thumb strokes roughly across the wet, red half moon ring of teeth at his pulse point, and then her fingers drift away, easing up until they are curled round his chin. 

“By your leave, joli.” Mirèio rasps, tongue sugar soft but dipped in a hard-edged desire. 

Cullen gives her the barest, roughest nod – a thread-thin whine on his lips – and that is enough for her.

Their lips meet with a bruising force, and Mirèio happily pulls a groan from Cullen's mouth by her wolfish lips; such music, such sweet, lovely music. Her tongue nudges against his lips and she is richly rewarded: he parts his lips and she strokes in deep, reveling in the wet, oddly metallic taste of his mouth. 

_Maker, but she's good with her tongue._

And then she is pulling away, breath sharp and shallow as his own. He follows her warmth, the loss stinging in the small spaces between his ribs. Coming back to his mouth, she gives him an achingly patient kiss, her tongue moving in slow, languid strokes against his own. No speed, but force and fire and promise. She kisses him until there are spots behind his eyes and his lungs burn in tandem with his skin. 

Her fingers are still curled around his chin.

And then she is gone again, the heat of her withdrawing until there is cold air between them; Cullen is left hollowed and weak-kneed, with only the heady burn of lust warming his body. 

“Mirèio?” Whatever sense is left in his head, it turns his words into muddled, rasping things that fall drunkenly from his tongue. “What?”

“Turn around.” 

She gives him just enough space to twist in her arms, and then the back of his thighs are pressed fast to the edge of the table and he must wrap his arms round her waist to keep himself from falling onto the map and the inksand and the the little markers scattered round like gold coins. A king's ransom beneath him, and a feast above.

_The sun in all its golden splendour would be shamed by the man beneath me_ , Mirèio thinks, wonder cutting through the fire of her own need. _And I doubt if he sees himself as such._

Maker, but he is so _beautiful_. 

So fair, and brave, and grievously wounded. Almost broken. And therein lies her fear: Is he ready to care for a mage, most especially one like her? She knows how greatly she can overwhelm, overshadow, overrule. And so does some small, terribly afraid voice in her tell her she must wait. 

His lips are red and his eyes are hooded, burning gold-coin bright, and there is the stain of desire splayed across his cheeks, down his fine neck. 

But she must wait.

Cullen must come to her of his own free will, or there must be nothing between them, ever again.

“Take off your armour.” Need held firmly at bay, she eases her command between Cullen's lips, drinks down his pleased, shivering sigh, and moves one full stride back. Her boots ring loudly and he makes an unhappy noise, reaching for her taller frame. 

“What are you doing?” Cullen nearly barks. “Come back.” He reaches for the nearest buckle, fingers tangling in the red linen pinned at his waist, and then her hands are back, closing round his face with an unexpected tenderness. Her palms are rough and hot against his skin; her fingers press gently into the underside of his jaw, tugging his face up to stare into her own.

“Look at me,” Mirèio speaks, gaze firmly on the lush, slick red of Cullen's mouth. His scar is made pale against the heat in his skin, and she wants nothing more than to make that little line hot again. “Cullen.”

Whatever he might have said is swallowed by the new steel in her grey eyes. He's forgotten about the brand, about the other man who still hides in the darker corners of his heart; he's forgotten why he feared to ask this of her, why he wasted so much time. 

“Breathe, joli,” she says, laughter falling from her mouth, bright as pebbles. She brings their foreheads together and for a moment she is content to let them sway like this, moving gently under the hand of a chill evening draft. 

The candles are still hissing their red wax song, and the sun is a sullen suggestion on the lowest portals of the great windows above their heads; Satinalia is dawning as the light is falling behind the mountains' white capped spine, and the shiver of voices rising up into a ready tumult is just beyond the door.

“Is something wrong?” That there is a question on his lips, rather than the heat of Mirèio's mouth is profoundly frustrating, and a little bubble of fear catches in his throat.

“You must make a choice, Cullen.”

“What?” His laughter climbs up until he is cackling like one of Leliana's ravens; the absence of her weight against his back has left him feeling light, as if he will drift away should she release her hold on him. Above all else, he does not want her to let go. “I think I already have, Mirèio.”

“Give yourself a moment to clear your head. Sort your thoughts,” Mirèio murmurs with a sigh, words spooling from her chest in a rough, rolling litany, “and decide if this is what you want. Without me looming over you like a bear.”

“No.” He panics, grabbing fistfuls of heavy fabric in his hands, fingers digging into her broad shoulders. “You mustn't go.” He watches that vicious, well loved smile curl up her lips, and it is as crooked and fierce and prideful as ever. Her hands are still framing his face, and the scent of oranges and bitter herbs is slowly soaking into cloth and skin alike.

“Take off your armour. Sit a little while, and decide. Put that tongue of yours to good use and teach it to speak of your desires. Speak them to yourself, and then come find me in the throne room. If you come without your armour, and if you choose to dance with me, I will hold that to be your answer.”

There is nothing like gratitude in him. 

“I do not need _time_ ,” he snaps, fingers still splayed like claws on her shoulders, “and my head is clear enough, Mirèio.” 

Mirèio snorts, mouth skewed and a little bitter. “Cullen, there are things you do not yet feel safe enough to speak to me of. I know what I am, what I want, how I will have it.” A pause invades her tongue, stopping up her rushing confidence. “Yes, there are things I have not told you, but they are not things that have left such wounds on me that others must give warning to their presence.”

“Is this about what Cassandra told you?” Cullen snarls. “Maker take that damnable Seeker.” He isn't angry with her, not really. She is his friend, and he would lay down his life for her, but he does not enjoy being prodded into a corner, however gentle the intentions. 

“I can consent to whatever will happen between us,” Mirèio soothes, the pads of her thumbs curled tenderly beneath Cullen's ears. “I am very afraid you cannot. Or, damn it. I do not know, but whatever it is, I need you to be sure. Sure that what I am is what you want. I could not bear to hurt you, even if it is unintentional.”

Cullen draws in an unsteady breath; he can only hope his eyes are bright for reasons other than the weight of the history he's not yet handed over into her care. “Is this about you being a mage? I know...” He flattens his palms against her shoulders, squeezing the taut line of her muscles beneath her resplendent robes. “I know we have not spoken of this often, but I would not have you continue to think _that_ is why I have not...”

“Do you remember that day in the snow, just before you ever so kindly let me know what an ass I was being?”

“When I thought you hated me?” he replies with a laugh, “yes.” 

_Should I tell her I no longer loathe the sight of Josephine's door? Would that earn me an invitation?_ he wonders, grasping at humour even in the face of this unwanted, sudden separation. 

_She can't leave._

_Why is she leaving?_

“I told you that whatever pain lived in your past, it was yours to keep. That still stands. When you are _ready_ , Cullen. Not before. And not because you are concerned I'll give up, or think less of you, or whatever it is that stills your tongue. There is no shame in looking after your own comfort.”

She gives him her words with a gentle, lingering press of her lips to his. No tongue. Only warmth. Patience. “Has no-one ever looked to your comfort first, Cullen? Has no one given you their patience, with no expectation of reward?”

_Oh but what a sad answer that is._ He finds there's no desire in his throat to give that honesty voice. She needs something else from him, and he would give it to her. 

“I have bedded others, and others have bedded me, if that is what you are asking.” He coughs, surprised that no flush touches his cheeks. “But kindness for the sake of kindness? Patience? Attentiveness? No. There is, there was no room for that in the Circles. There was so little of what you might have called _softness_ in Kinloch, and none in Kirkwall. And what I do remember of those things, well, it is a very old, well-worn memory at best. A bitter reminder at worst.”

Mirèio frowns. “Kinloch? Was that not the only Circle to fall during the Blight? I hadn't more than eighteen summers to my name when the Blight began, and Ostwick was near overrun with Ferelden refugees seeking escape. Many of them stayed, and our city and villages became full of odd, stone-tongued, tow-headed Fereldens. Sadly, I did not learn until the spring after just how charming a tow-headed Ferelden lass could be. I knew a lad in the season before Satinalia. Never could decide which I preferred.” 

“Thank you,” Cullen sighs, tugging Mirèio back into his grasp. She allows him to dig his fingers into the yellow sash at her waist, his head on her shoulder in place of his hands. 

“Of course, joli.”

“Will you tell me what that means, Mirèio?” The word is achingly sweet on her lips: a whisper meant for lovers, for the quiet dark of a bedchamber and the heat of one body curled in another. Cullen cannot help but wonder who else she has crowned with that word, who cradles that memory close, who has heard it before him. She never did tell their very drunken circle what little love-word Asha had crafted for her. 

“No, not yet. Joli,” Mirèio chuckles. She has no desire to disentangle herself from the man curled round her taller shape; she does not want to think that giving Cullen leave to run will draw him so far from her she will never catch him again. “In an hour, the hart may decide it is better to run.”

“No,” Cullen laughs, laughs with such ease it is nearly shattering. Can she not hear the light in his voice? 

“Perhaps we are both afraid, Mirèio?” His words are quiet, gentle and sure of step, even though he murmurs them into the crook of her neck. Just over the line of her shoulder, Cullen can see the tumbling disk of the sun crowned in all the violent colours of a bitterly cold sunset. With his nose pressed to her hair he can smell the oil she uses in her bath, feel the mundane, all too unknown shifting of her body beneath his cheek; her heart beat. 

His dreams are made poor, half-finished scraps in the force of her reality. 

“I would think, joli, our fears are made of very different things.”

At that, he looks up, pulls away to take in her whole face, her whole black-banner frame. He gives her a smile as if he is pulling riches from his own mouth, and says: “We'll find out soon enough. Unless you send me off with a unit of our soldiers to search for rocks, or pick herbs. On that note, please never send me to go digging through a swamp for any reason, ever again. Do you have any idea how much the soldiers complain about mud in their boots?”

“No,” she parries back with a merry laugh, drags a hand down her face with a mind to be careful not to ruin the painstaking artistry of Leliana's damn eye-paint, “no resource procurement for at least a fortnight and a half, joli. Have no fear.” Gently, she prods the man in front of her towards the dusty, empty doorway. 

“The candles must be put out now, Cullen, so I would suggest you move towards the door.” A tug, a soft word on her lips, and the breeze from the open window comes sighing into her hands: cold and clean and kissed by snow. From in front of her, she hears the mighty General of the most formidable army in all of Thedas snort, face scrunched up like a petulant child.

“I am not made of glass, Mirèio. You pulled a great, razor sharp tree root out of the earth, and skewered six –”

“Nine,” Mirèio corrects, tongue held firmly in her cheek.

“Nine,” Cullen rolls his eyes skyward, “of those hulking red lyrium beasts as if they were sausage for the camp fire. Shook them about like cornsilk dolls, and then lobbed the bloody root at the next unit. A bit of wind magic is hardly shocking.” 

The candles snuff out, and Cullen's mouth is full of her, of the taste of her magic: salt and fire and rain-heavy, dark earth. But the sear of her magic across his skin is soft and ever so gentle when laid beside the memory of the red-slick sword she became in the fires of Haven. 

He shivers, and the wind is not to blame.

“Ah,” Mirèio hums, a languorous little rolling of her tongue, “now that is a question I have picked at for no little portion of time.”

“And what questions is that?” Cullen replies, matching her long strides as they come round to the other side of the sprawling table. He will not rub the back of his neck. He will not. 

“Could you care for a mage? Is this,” she motions between them as they come to a halt before her sword, “between us – is it in spite of my magic? Is my magic a great hurdle to overcome? I should not like to ask so much of you. I...” Her gaze falls to the hilt of her blade, its ruby inset gleaming like a fat drop of blood. That blade has parted many templars from the last breath in their bones, and she cannot forget what once he was.

“I – I have also thought of that. Of what I might say, should you have approached me. I will never again be a templar, but you will always be a mage, and I do not. I did not think to.” He sighs, and, sure as the rains and the snow, his hand comes up to rub the back of his neck. “Please do not laugh, but I had a little speech written out. I have _pages_ tucked into a ledger in my desk.”

Mirèio finds her mouth has fallen open, her fingers grasping air rather than the leather straps of her scabbard. “You have pages?” she drawls. “Surely you jest?” She shakes her head as if to bully his words to better sense. “Pages?” 

Cullen nods, hot and prickling down to his toes.

“Whyever haven't you just _told_ me?” She hopes her wide eyed incredulity tells him she is plainly without words. Without good recourse to his rather pointed hesitation.

“We are at war. You are the Inquisitor. I am. Well. To say that I am a peasant is the least of my faults.”

Mirèio scoffs, handsome face turning thunderously dark. Her disdain echoes through the war-room, striding against a sudden gasp of bitter chill. “And to all of Orlais, to all Tevinter and Nevarra, House Trevelyan is a line of farmers pretending to a station much above their right. Peasant?” She snarls. “I've known nugs more noble than those who call themselves Arls, Banns, Dukes or Magisters.”

Cullen smiles, touched by her obstinate refusal to hold herself above. She is above, of course, but he'll not disabuse her of the reticence to admit it. “It seemed too much to ask. No matter how very much I wished to. Ask, that is.” 

Her fingers are still hovering near the silver clasps of her scabbard, and Cullen cannot help but wonder, yet again, just how much she will allow by his hands.

“May I?” he murmurs, willing his voice to be as dulcet as hers often is to his ears. The question earns him a frown before curiosity burnishes her gaze back into its familiar, steel-bright shine. There is pleasure to be found in knowing he has put such anticipation into the too-sharp splendour of her face.

She ducks her head and gives him the barest, most regal of nods – and Cullen grasps her sword in his hands. The buckles jangle brightly: each is a feast of gold and silver richly etched with curling vines and flowers. It is a beautiful sword, and beneath his hands he feels the hum of its battle-song, feels the nettle of its enchantments spooled tight into the fist of the ruby at its hilt. 

“Does it have a name?” Cullen asks, gathering up the long, trailing leather straps in his fist. “Was it a gift?”

“My mother forged it for me on my thirteenth name day,” Mirèio replies, mouth soft and eyes distant, “but I set the ruby. Her name is Scivias. It is Tevene for...”

“ _Know the Ways_ ,” Cullen whispers; the name burrows sharply in his throat as if it were a nest of little, prickling thorns. Of course. Of course she would name her sword after a heretical Tevinter text of holy visions. His hands move of their own accord to brace the cross guard of Mirèio's sword against her hip. “Know the ways of the Maker. Know the ways of His Children. Know the ways of thyself.” 

“Know the ways of thyself, above all else,” Mirèio finishes, tracing a finger down the nape of Cullen's bared neck.

He looks up at her through his lashes and she is once more draped in kingly black and gold, and he cannot help his thought: did Maferath gaze in wonder upon Andraste's face, just like this? Before he betrayed her to Tevinter, and the fire. Before his love for her sharpened him into a blade laid against her naked heart. 

No.

_Mirèio is not Andraste,_ he chides himself, _and I am no Maferath._

And so his steady hands begin to wrap the leather round her waist; the gear is well-oiled, supple and scented by her own touch, and its weight in his grasp is somehow an odd sort of comfort. Tis a heavy sword, and she makes it sing through the air as if it were a brace of twigs. More than that, it is the real, cold evidence of her formidable strength, and it so _gratifying_.

“You speak Tevene?”

“No,” Cullen chuckles, “but I do enjoy Tevene tragedies. I can read it well enough. Having a conversation, that is another matter entirely.”

With the utmost care, he twists and tugs the straps into place. Perhaps he should be embarrassed by how well he knows the pattern of her sword harness, but there is no room for shame so close to the heat of her taller frame.

His fingers do not tremble when he threads the leather through the smaller buckles and he is far too proud of that little mercy, drinks it down as if he has come to water in a sprawling desert; drinks it down like burning sunlight. 

“Thank you, Cullen,” she murmurs, wholly consumed by the gold lace of his lashes against those peach and honey cheeks. Damn Fereldens and their summer sweet skin. It'll be the death of her, these gilt beauties with their awkward, stone heavy tongues. She's a fool and she's caught and she knows it. She wants and will have and she knows it. The happy flush that kisses his high cheekbones is too delicious for words, too delicate for any answer but her own silver tongue on that spreading, red heat. 

His fingers are still braced round her waist, and they are drawn together as if caught in some great, weighty current. 

“I must go back to the hall, joli,” Mirèio murmurs. Cullen has strong hands, sure fingers; she is inordinately pleased by this little discovery. “And you should _ruminate_ on certain things,” she drawls, “before the Wild Night ends and we all go back to our beds too drunk to take our boots off.” 

“Satinalia need not end in drunkenness for all its revelers, my lady.” Cullen pries what he wants from her lips: that rough, sweet chuckle that never fails to put fire in his bones, and she darts out to nip the offending 'lady' from his lips with her teeth. Those same teeth flash white in the encroaching darkness, and he only just manages to keep from groaning into her mouth. 

“No,” she replies, barking laughter bouncing off the stones around them, “no it does not. In that you are most correct.” She gives him a narrow slice of her teeth, and turns to go. 

Her shadow is long, and there is only the susurus of her black and ruby seeded robe against the thrushes strewn about the flagstone floor. 

“Ask, joli, and it shall be so,” echoes in the silence.


	6. but as she fleeth afore

~ * ~

Under the cedar and the shadows and the failing light, Cullen wraps his palms over the back of his neck and finds himself bent as if the hand of the Maker Himself were flattened against his spine. His head spins and for a moment he imagines that the gravity of this moment will win, will pull him down to the earth and let him hear its song as she does. 

He wants her to come back, but that is well beyond his reach. 

As always, he settles for what he can do, rather than what he can have, because that it what all his life has shaped him to do, and puts one foot in front of the other. Over and over.

Te walk back to his office is a muddle of indistinct shapes; he doesn't remember if he managed to put all of the little markers back in their proper place. He's not entirely sure where he's left his mind. Or his senses. He's not even sure if he closed the door well enough to slide the lock into place. 

His lips are burning. When he brings his fingers up to touch, the cold leather of his gloves only serves as a reminder. 

_Sit_ , her voice echoes in the snow-soft silence. And so he does, though his chair protests loudly. In a heartbeat he's put his teeth through every moment of Mirèio's weight against his, brought each to his mouth as if they were fruit to be devoured. He shivers. Cannot stop. 

Some of the questions are still nettling under his ribs: sharp and all too twisted to pry apart without costing a little blood.

_Can you care for a mage?_

It shames him that she had to ask, that she might still be uncertain of his answer. Worse still, he knows what his answer would have been only a few years ago. And that thought sickens him. 

Worse, he knows why she asked him, and it was not out of a fear for his long history of hatred and ignorance in the company of mages. Mirèio may have uttered those words, but there were other, more truer fears lurking under her tongue. 

_Are you afraid of me?_ might have been the truer question. _Do I frighten you?_

He knows she's a beast. 

He knows she is a font of wild, vicious magic that turns her eyes to lances of sparking green-gold flame: a creature made of thunder and fire and stone and ice and wind. And earth. Always earth, and that smell that rises from the dust just after rain.

He _understands_ why many in Orlais, Ferelden and the Marches speak her name with fear twisted round their tongue, but he does not care. 

He knows she teaches the little ones, the tiny, bird-boned mage-children who have come streaming in alongside the tattered remnants of the Circles, with the utmost care and patience. He knows she does so wearing such a smile as he's never seen on her face in any other company, save perhaps for his own. He knows she teaches the little ones to grow. To plant. To sing to life fragile green shoots, and riotously colourful flowers, and spindly little trees. 

Yes, she is a black and unrelenting terror: a driving, shattering hammer that moves with implacable cruelty. A high-handed King whose voice sings truest in the red violence of destruction. He knows that, intimately. 

And she is a farmer. A sheep-herder. A jaunty, silver tongued rogue raised in the sharp teeth of the Minater River's sprawl, along the spine of castell Montjuïc. He knows she is an overzealous barterer and a diligent accountant, if her spider scrawl alongside Josephine's elegant curls is any indication.

If the Maker, in all his infinite wisdom, can fashion a creature such as she, can shape for her the heart to be all of those things, then he too can be more than what he is now. He can be more than a bitter, brittle hearted former Templar rattling the chains he'd first chosen to wear of his own free will. 

He is already a General, a Commander. The leader of the greatest army Thedas has seen since the Exalted March on Tevinter. Already he is a little more free of the lyrium than he was nearly a year gone from this hour. He does not flinch quite so dramatically when some unknown mage barrels into his office looking for the only green-singer in all of Skyhold. 

He has _friends_. People who trust him not for the sword at his side or the one emblazoned over his heart, but for the parts of him that have aught to do with the title he bears. 

More than that, he can _ask_ her for what he most desires from her, and know that he will not be turned away. No shame lives in her for the nature of her desires, that much is clear.

Elbows resting on the mess of his desk, Cullen brings his hands together and rests his forehead on his knuckles. Oddly enough, it's not a prayer on his lips. He knows the Maker had nothing to do with this. Only Mirèio did. But he gives his thanks to the silence and the enclosing night anyway, unsure of how to breathe the lightness out of his frame.

Above all else, he needs to tell her the answer is yes. 

There is a knock at his door, and he barely resists the urge to fling it open and chase away whoever is fool enough to disturb him.

“Commander?” A familiar voice summons, one that tinkles like little copper coins, and laughs with a silvery, fascinating ease. “Are you well?”

“Lady Ambassador?”

At least he manages to open the door without giving Josephine the impression he'd rather have a sucking chest wound than bandy words about at the moment. Tis no fault of hers, this sweetly un-gentle dislocation of his. 

“I had hoped, when Mirèio came back to the hall, that you'd changed your mind.” Her grin is only just so wide – a cautious thing that only gently touches her eyes. “And then I thought to myself: Josephine, what if our dear commander simply has nothing to wear? He's a soldier after all – what does he care for things like colour and stitching and silk.” 

There is a neatly wrapped package in her hands, and something like anticipation on her tongue.

Cullen opens his mouth to reply, thinks to tell her about the cookies she'd sent him. Just butter and sugar and a little cinnamon. Just a few squares in a tin. But they'd tasted so good. He'd forgotten just how good. Few know just how lyrium dulled the tongue, robbed its drinkers of their full palate.

Nearly a year without, and he can taste sweetness again. 

Should he tell her he'd nearly cried?

Should he tell her he keeps the tunics she gifted him in a separate trunk? That he won't let their fine fabric touch any of the clothes he managed to save from Kirkwall's ruin? Should he tell her each piece reeks of oranges and wild herbs, and that Mirèio knows where each bolt of cloth came from, which guild did the stitching, which artisan chose the dye? 

The Lady Ambassador with a steel-trap mind, Mirèio's princesa, and the little butterfly of House Montilyet, laughs. Without another word, she thrusts the package into the Commander's hands.

“You'll match nicely, I think.”

She's half way across the stones before Cullen can think to answer, or offer thanks.

Without wasting another moment, he kicks the door shut with his boot and returns to his desk.

The package is wrapped in white linen and tied up with red twine – there is a wax seal atop, and he knows, thanks in part to the massive velum chart in Mirèio's solar, that this came from a prestigious Nevaran guild, but the fabric itself is made with wool and thread from Ostwick.

Cullen doesn't know whether to laugh, or hide his face in horror: Josephine knows. If Josephine knows, Leliana knows. If Leliana knows, then all of Thedas will know soon enough.

His fingers shakily tug on the twine, and he tries to be careful with the seal – if only to thrust it under Mirèio's nose and plead with her to ensure whatever will be between them goes no further than themselves. 

He's no fool, and not entirely without caution. Mirèio is the Inquisitor. No. She is the Inquisition itself. Many would be happy to see her fail. Would be even happier to spill her blood. No one, and he very much means _no one_ needs to know she has taken an interest in someone. An ex-Templar no less. A former Knight-Commander. A peasant. A landless, Nameless, Houseless Ferelden dog-lord with nothing to claim but what the Inquisition has given him.

The White Spire would have his balls for this, if there were aught but a handful of aged Templars under her shadow. 

Mother Giselle will use his guts for ribbons.

So will Vivienne.

The linen falls away and Cullen's breath catches in his throat.

Josephine has such impeccable, irreproachable taste.

The tunic is a golden sprawl of sunshine and knot-work embroidery as black as night: tiny, delicate roses curl across the cuffs, their little petals as red as blood and their hearts stuffed with gold and chips of silver thread; at his neck is a collar of tiny Ferelden fire finches; the black gloves bear the same roses just at the golden hem nearest the skin of his wrists. 

He's profoundly grateful he happens to have black boots and breeches of his own.

Every inch of this cloth is too fine by far for his skin, but who is he to rebuke a gift of this measure?

The soap is out of his kit and the kettle is on the fire before he remembers that he hasn't washed since this morning. He rubs his hands down his neck, wincing at the prickling mark Mirèio left on his skin, and hopes to the throne of the Maker Himself that he hadn't tasted like ashes and sweat when she'd put her tongue on him. Then again, she does not seem like the sort of woman who would complain about such a thing.

Soon enough the water is steaming, and Cullen sets it on the desk with a heavy thud. He wrings out the wash cloth and makes quick work of the grime he's accumulated from ears to hip joints. It's ridiculous. He's being ridiculous. This is ridiculous. And he cannot be bothered to care. 

The outstretched hand is not hesitant any more. 

He must remind himself it never was hesitant.

Far from. 

While he dries he writes the morning's watch notices, drafts the next fortnight's resource procurement schedules despite Mirèio's indications otherwise, and checks the figures in his ledger to ensure their supply of iron and silverite is holding steady at a reasonable price. If he slams the drawer shut with too much force when he catches sight of his lyrium kit, no one is near enough to hear him curse.

Rising up, he dresses with care, fingers gentle against the gold-spun, silk soft cotton. He hadn't notice before, but the collar is lined with wool, and it makes the red finches look as if they are wheeling through a cloud thick sky. 

This is ridiculous.

And he does not care.

From just beyond the quiet of his office, Cullen can hear the hoarse groaning of the doors to the great hall being flung wide open. On the heels of that noise is the noise of people gathering round, voices and feet and eager hearts moving in a river towards the no doubt sweetly scented heat of the throne room.

Cullen does not enjoy the company or scrutiny of strangers, he never has, but for her sake he will make the effort. 

Moving quickly in the bracing chill, Cullen reaches the threshold of the great hall with his heart in his throat. When he strides over the thick golden line denoting the stones of the stairs from the smooth marble of the hall, he does not think overlong on that other line: the one other hands had drawn between himself and Mirèio. Now he knows for certain: she will drag him over that line with reckless abandon, and he will give her leave to do so without a moment's hesitation.

The hall is filled with voices calling out to others: nobles and civilians alike, all with eager, red-cheeked faces and murmured greetings in their mouths. He knows a handful of them; if this were Kirkwall, Viscount Hawke would be swanning through the throngs of revellers with his apostate lover on his arm, by his side, just over his shoulder, and Cullen would already have a headache pounding away behind his forehead.

Hawke would laugh in his face. Laugh and laugh until he could not take another breath. And then the man would laugh more, laugh harder. 

“Maker's breath, Commander, but don't you look _radiant_ tonight.”

“Dorian,” Cullen chuckles, holding out a hand for the other man to grasp, “your surprise wounds me, ser.”

“Oh please, Commander. As if I should ever believe that.” Dorian laughs. “Who dressed you? Vivienne? Leliana? No,” the mage claps, pacing a tight circle round the man in question, “this is Josephine's handiwork. Certainly.” The Tevinter mage grins like a cat, a cat who has just caught the sweetest morsel between its teeth. “Does our great Bear know you've chosen to attend?” 

“I would prefer to surprise her.”

Dorian's only reply is a quirk of his lips, one eyebrow curved high as if to say _Oh, what fun._

“Have you seen Mirèio yet, Commander?” 

_What an unexpected delight_ , Dorian thinks to himself. These odd Southerners don't call it the Wild Night for nothing, after all, and if he is going to flit about in their company he might as well lose himself in their fervour with equal abandon. Won't do any good to be the only fool in the crowd not drunk and sprawling over some other, equally warm body. 

“Someone has dressed her like a king. Quite fierce. Rather intimidating.” 

“I know.” 

Later, Cullen will get down on his knees and thank Andraste Herself for just how dry his voice remains, just how carefully bare.

“Do you now?” Dorian purrs. He leans closer to the man he now resolutely calls his friend and says: “Are you finally going to run her down like a deer in the woods?”

Cullen chokes, and Dorian must bite his lips red to keep from laughing like one of those merry, somewhat unsettling harlequins that jingle and jape through the courts of Orlais.

“No,” Cullen hisses, “and may the Void take you if you insinuate such to anyone other than myself, my friend.”

“Ah,” the altus drawls, Tevene pulling the syllables from his mouth like spun sugar, “not you who will do the chasing then. Her. She runs very quickly, Cullen. And when she falls upon her prey they do not rise again.”

“Dorian.” There is a warning on his tongue, hushed and yet sharp in the din.

The mage laughs, low and soft, a conspiratorial gleam in his eye. “Oh, but I am appalled I did not realize this sooner. I'm out of practice, it seems. I'm afraid I did not have you _pegged_ as the sort.”

And suddenly Cullen has lost his war with the heat in his cheeks and the stutter of his pulse; he snaps a hand into Dorian's chest and stalks off into the crowd, shoulders straight and head held high. He does not turn back, even though the mage's musical laughter clings to his neck until he's put two dozen strange faces between them.

Ahead, a voice calls out to announce the beginning of the evening meal, and Cullen finds he does not have to look long to find her in the crowd.

Someone has crowned her with golden laurels; the leaves touch her temples like wings.

_Oh Holy Maker._

“Commander.” Her summons is languorous. Sweet fire. Hard steel. “I am most pleased you chose to honour us with your company.” 

And then his grin is as crooked an answer as hers.

From just behind the Inquisitor's shoulder, Leliana giggles: a cutting tinkle of glass buffeted by the methodical motions of a fan held to her lips. “Commander Rutherford, but don't you look pretty this evening. Who has dressed you so deftly?” She knows the answer, but she'd rather have it from his own mouth. Just to be sure. 

Cullen rolls his eyes and points towards the Antivan woman who seems to be consumed in a sprightly match of words with a clutch of Ferelden Banns and one stiff-backed Nevaran Lady. “Our Lady Ambassador was kind enough to provide me with the finery, if you are so curious, sénéchal.”

“Our Josephine does have the most irreproachable taste in clothing.” Leliana parries back with a little twitch of her lips. “Now if only I could coax from our Inquisitor the name of the craftshouse that made her own finery, this night will be a rich one indeed.”

Cullen flounders for a moment, before dragging his gaze back to the Inquisitor: she is dressed much the same, save for the leaves. Only he notices that she has clapped thick gold cuffs over her wrists, each decorated with tiny, musical bells. 

His eyes glide over the complex pattern of her yellow sash, and his breath stills in his throat: around her neck is a thick, braided torq, and each point is a ram's head crowned in great horns made of curling ivory. 

A sovereign in black and gold.

“Mustn't forget the sandals, Commander,” Mirèio quips with a laugh, lips pressed together and eyes thunder-clap bright, “I think Leliana will attempt to steal them before the night is through.”

“Oh yes,” Leliana replies, “I haven't seen Rivaini sandals in an age. Not since my days in the care of Lady Cecily. Maker's Blood but that woman had the finest collection of footwear I have ever seen. You know, the Golden Empress herself would _kill_ for sandals so fine.”

Mirèio snorts, and the little bells sigh. “Leliana, you are woman of such fascinating contradictions. Shoes and daggers. Pretty birds and dangerous secrets. You'd cut a man's throat, and then have the temerity to ask where his wife bought that lovely perfume.”

Three beats of the fan, and Leliana's smile is as wolfish as Mirèio's is wont to be. “Perhaps.” She laughs. “The Left Hand of the Divine needs be many things, Inquisitor. And you know what they say in Orlais: 'The softest pouches hide the sharpest blades'.”

“Do they now?” Mirèio chokes, laughter welling up in her throat.

Leliana grins, and snaps her fan shut with practiced speed. 

“Pouches and blades aside, my friend,” the Inquisitor continues, “I think perhaps even the left hand would agree with the right that it is time to find our seats before we end up sat amongst that little viper's nest of Orlesians I see lurking in the corner.” 

She makes a shooing motion with her hands, and then Cullen is alone with her. As alone as he might hope for in the sweet-scented forest of people and soaring red banners. 

“Hello joli,” she smiles, offers him the loop of her arm. 

Cullen finds it is all too easy to step into her reach, so very easy it feels like a sudden cut: a red thing he must press his hands over, and smile through the pain. Why is it so easy? How has it any right to be?

_Why does the hart run?_

_Why indeed._

“Wonders never cease,” is her soft comment, just as his arm slides through hers. 

At the Inquisitor's too-bright tread, a sea of ermine, crimson satin, crushed green velvet and white slashing part as sighing lovers in the night. Most eyes are down cast and many a cheek is red with promise.

“Head high, Commander,” the Inquisitor cautions, and the crowd folds in behind their wake like brightly coloured birds, satin wings and gilded feathers shifting as if to give voice to restless murmurs, “and try not to look anyone in the eye.”

Cullen swallows, and his arm tightens in hers. 

“Nobles gossip,” Mirèio whispers, “pay it no mind.”

“That is easier said than done, my lady.” Cullen returns, with only a little kiss of bitterness in his mouth. “I grew up in a barn in comparison to these _creatures_ ,” he hisses. 

“Would you believe this was one of the hardest lessons I had to learn? How to pass in the company of those of my own station without making a fool of myself. Or bloodying someone's nose.” Her words are given over with a merry, darkling chuckle. “I was so terrible at it. Just, just inexcusably terrible, as my uncle liked to remind me.”

“I find that very hard to believe, Inquisitor.”

Mirèio blows a great gust of air from her chest and her lips curl up in that familiar, silver'd grin. “Uncle Llorenç nearly tore his hair out trying to get me to behave. I'll never forget the first time I was bullied into attending at a salon in Tantervale: I'd been placed with a little coterie of Orlesian ladies and their petite-hire – handmaidens – and three young lords. One of the _boys_ asked if I was promised yet, or if I was happier to stay were I belonged. With my sheep.”

Cullen chokes, a swift, high-climbing outrage colouring his words. “I beg your pardon? Someone sat at a table in a salon and – and insulted you as if – ”

“I reached for the first thing my hands could grasp, which, sadly, was only a dinner roll. I cocked back my arm and _hurled_ that poor little roll at the boy's head. And then I reached for another one. Mercifully enough I didn't manage to get to the candlestick.”

The laughter comes unexpectedly, but it's not unwelcome. With a bright, disorganized smile, Cullen says: “Of course you did.”

“I'll tell you what I told Llorenç,” Mirèio continues, crooking a finger to draw the man's face nearer to hers. She leans down just so, and whispers: “Who gives a fucking copper what those fools think. I am not here for their sport. And neither are you.”

And then they are at one of the long tables, and Cullen finds he is terribly disappointed.

“Shall we?” Mirèio murmurs, her breath still on his ear.

“No.” Cullen mutters, sour-faced. “Yes.”

“Quickly,” Mirèio says, picking up their pace, “lest that northern bird of ours discovers his seat is taken.”

The meal passes in a flurry of voices and merry, highly inappropriate questions. Someone shares a story, and then another, and Dorian sits on the Inquisitor's left without comment, though he bites his lips and laughs to himself as if he's just been given the finest gift in all the southern lands. 

The servants come to clear away the platters, replacing wine goblets and returning with dishes of candied fruit and nuts. Slices of rich, dark cake drenched in white glaze. 

And then Maryden's voice rings out like a clarion bell, and Cullen winces.

“Lords and Ladies, brothers and sisters,” the bard cries, lute held in her clever hands, “the hour is upon us. Up! Lords and Ladies. To the Wild Night!”

Tis at this point in the evening that he remembers one very, very important matter: he cannot dance, and he's forgotten to tell Mirèio so. 

Luckily, or perhaps not, Master Pavus solves his sudden crisis for him.

“Well, my Bear, shall we dance?” Dorian croons, one hand oh so casually extended to Mirèio. “You did say you were quite good, and I'm eager for a demonstration.”

“Ah,” Mirèio drawls, “only if I can choose the song, cariñu.”

“Of course,” Dorian laughs. “However do I know what sort of tune you curious, backwards Southerners prefer?”

“You might regret that.”

“Oh?” 

“I am very good. I do hope you can keep up, Altus Pavus.”

Dorian claps his hands together, and his grin would shame the whitest ivory. “I await your indulgence. Eagerly.”

“Maryden!” the Inquisitor bellows, voice rough yet honeyed by northern Tevinter wine. “Triste ei lo ceu!”

The drums start and Cullen shivers cold and then hot, and finds a sudden ache between his legs. He watches as Dorian is whisked away in sure, capable strides. The laughter is bright in both their mouths. 

Mirèio's sandals flash under the dark sea of her robes, and Dorian glides alongside her with a practiced, easy grace. They are well matched, sure of foot. Hands extended they wait; the drums pick up, and Maryden adds her voice to the rolling beat. 

They move in unison, circling round each other with only the tips of their fingers touching. And then Mirèio's arm is around Dorian's waist and they are whirling away, moving in sharp, yet languid circles, turning in a pattern built of drums and Maryden's soaring voice. 

Tis a magnificent sight. So much so, Cullen does not notice that Cassandra has slid down the length of the bench to join him. Her eyes are fixed on the pair of mages twirling across the stones, but her smile is for her friend.

“When I recruited you in Kirkwall, Commander, this was perhaps the very last...”

“I know,” Cullen breathes, with just a hint of laughter. “The irony is not lost on me, Lady Cassandra.”

“The Maker works in mysterious ways,” the Seeker continues, “as does his Bride.”

Cullen hums in agreement, eyes pinned to the elegant, powerful line of Mirèio's taller body as she dips the man in her arms; Dorian bends with shocking ease, and a hearty bolt of laughter.

Beside him, Cullen can here Cassandra take a deep breath, her words caught behind her teeth, and a rosy flush on her cheeks.

“Seeker?” He questions, slanting his gaze to her. There is colour high on her sharp cheekbones, and an odd, entirely disconcerting question in her dark eyes. 

“Perhaps Varric is better at this than I, but...”

She shakes her head, and speaks:

I want a trouble-maker for a lover,  
blood-spiller, blood-drinker, a heart of flame,  
Who quarrels with the sky and fights with fate,  
Who burns like fire on the rushing sea.

“I...” Cullen's mouth has fallen open, and the mages on the stone floor are momentarily forgotten. “My lady?”

“I've seen the books in your office Commander. You and I have similar tastes.”

Cullen laughs, dizzy and red to the ears.

“Our Inquisitor is a hard woman, and sometimes I am unsure if I understand her as well as I would like. But she has lead us well thus far. Just,” the Nevaran woman pauses, caution weighty her tongue, “just be careful.”

Cullen finds a bristling retort on his tongue, half angered and half wounded.

“Some lines are not meant to be crossed, Commander.”

“Bellisima!” Josephine shouts, and Cullen finds the dance has ended, the partners bowing to a whistles and applause.

“Oh, wasn't that magnificent?” she sighs, turning to the Warden at her side. Blackwall nods, proffers his own hand, and then the pair are gone away: out to the marble floor and the whirling, joyful crowd.

From across the table, out over the polished stone floor and the leaping shadows cast by the torches and candle heavy chandeliers, Cullen meets Mirèio's eyes, and remembers an odd little Marcher poem about the sweetness of arrows fired from lovers' hands.

“I find I am tired of lines, Seeker.”

“Aren't we all?" She gives him a little twitch of her lips, dark eyes alight with a gentle mirth, and then turns her attention to the dwarf and the qunari across the table. 

Dorian returns to his seat first, only a little shine on his brow, and tosses back the dregs of his wine with audible pleasure. 

“Are you going to sit here all night, Cullen?”

In the face of Dorian's needling, Cullen finds a rueful grin on his face. How could he have forgotten to tell her he could not dance? 

“Templars do not make a habit of attending balls, my friend.” He sighs, eyes roving out over the crowd to find Mirèio's tall, black-banner shape circling through the press of finery. She's been caught by an Orlesian damé in Nevaran black-work and lace, and the woman looks frightfully delicate next to the Inquisitor. “And I'd rather not make a fool of myself in front of so many highborn spectators. In front of her.”

Dorian makes an incredulous noise, his hands flapping about uselessly. “Honestly now,” he chides, “I can't tolerate the two of you twiddling your thumbs forever.”

Cullen sputters until he catches sight of Mirèio gliding through the throng, she and the damé in her arms moving with languid, sensuous grace. 

“Hand to the Maker's throne, Cullen, that woman on the dance floor doesn't give a fucking half-sovereign as to the skill of your feet.”

The damé bows and extends a hand for a kiss, and at his side Cullen can hear Dorian murmur: “It's all well and good to be afraid, my friend.”

Cullen drags his eyes from the Inquisitor, and finds in Dorian's face not half so much wine-flush as he might have thought. There is a serious, sombre weight in the mage's eyes, and his mouth is not quite so finely curled as it is often wont to be. 

With a little nudge, Dorian laughs, says: “I certainly am. Afraid. Better to try, dearest. The regret is worse.”

His fingers itch in his gloves, and there is a prickling, sharp-toothed despair in his chest. “I – it is rather a question of worth, Dorian.”

“In your mind, perhaps,” the man concedes, and then points out to the whirling cavalcade of silk and perfume and rosy cheeks, to the tall, dark shape in its midst, “but not in hers, I think. Not in hers.”

Maryden's voice rises in a sonorous, jubilant spiral, and under her soaring is the bright ringing of little bells and plucking of lutes, the trilling of a flute; and then Mirèio is moving, moving.

Cullen blinks and she is stood before him, laurels like wings and ivory horns bright against a sea of black.

Before him: the outstretched hand. 

Dorian makes a little sound, like the first note of the first chorus of Androsias and Phrene, and turns back to the wine cup in his hand.

It was easy before, and he can either believe it will continue to be easy or falter now for no other reason than a scrap of caution tied round his limbs; he'd rather have something other than hesitation binding his wrists.

Mercifully enough, his knees do not crack against the underside of the table when he stands, and the sudden blister of joy in Mirèio's eyes strikes him squarely in the chest, wraps sharp, welcome fingers round his throat. Only it is not just joy, but triumph.

_Triumph._

There is not a single thing in him that knows what to do with _that_. It makes him dizzy, steals his breath, makes him feel as if he's back in his office with his teeth in the fruit of a new memory he cannot quite understand yet.

If his thoughts are a stinging whirl, his feet are not quite so useless, and, as if pushed by some foreign hand, Cullen begins to move down the length of the table until he hears the click of Mirèio's tongue: a disapproving chuff of air.

He stops.

“Come now, Commander,” she chides, “tis the Wild Night. Up and over.” There is a pointed gleam in place of her high-handed joy, and her teeth are sharp against the red of her mouth.

“What?” Cullen replies, a deep line cutting a valley between his brows.

She curls her fingers up and extends her hand again: a summons as clear as day.

“Up and over.”

“Surely not,” he cautions, “not in front of the guests.” The mirth on his lips is altogether too nervous for the preservation of his dignity, and there is something sharp in the back of his throat: a terribly dry heat he cannot swallow down. 

“All of Skyhold will drink until they are so far gone they would not know their own two hands.” Mirèio offers up her reasoning gently, grin still too sharp, too much the curling of desire. “Live a little, Cullen.”

And then he is grinning, his boot landing heavily on the bench.

“Car trop langui longuement, joli.” Mirèio sighs, just as his hand slides into hers; he does not disturb a single dish on his climb over the silver and fruit-cake laden table. 

“I can't speak the northern Marcher dialect, Mirèio.”

“I know,” is her cheerful reply. 

Stepping boldly, trusting in his feet and her hands, Cullen reaches the other bench with ease, but he cannot wipe the red off his face at the smattering of applause and whistling that comes just as his boots touch the stone floor. 

“Have you no thought for how much soldiers gossip, Mirèio?” The words are a little hiss held behind tight lips, but he makes no effort to pulls his hands from hers. “I swear if a single one of them harasses me on the morrow you will pay dearly.” For all his bluster, the only reward he receives is an intolerably bright clap of laughter.

“The wine will flow like a river tonight, Cullen.” She tugs him forward, closer still, and says: “the only ones who will not be chasing the bottom of their cups are you and I.”

Cullen frowns. 

“After all,” she continues, “one must keep a clear head, in order to make a clear choice.” The words come out roughly, and so they do not sound like the afterthought she intended them to be.

And then, quite suddenly, Cullen cannot be bothered to keep the mirth between his lips. “Well then, I must tell you: I did not appreciate being sent back to my office. I would prefer that you _not_ do that again.”

“You shall thank me for it later,” Mirèio replies, the tip of her tongue caught by her teeth and her eyes turning dark, piercing. 

“That is most presumptuous of you, my lady.” Cullen scoffs, his gaze narrowing pointedly.

“Aye,” she strings out cheerily, “that it is.”

He hasn't noticed until now, but somehow, whether by the force of her company or the gentle iron of her grip, she has led them to the dance floor. Into the heart of the revellers and their softly rustling finery.

“Is that all you have to say for yourself, Inquisitor?” Tis very hard not to laugh, especially when the woman beside him still has his hand in hers, is still looking at him as if she's swallowed down the the sun in all its fierce, burning light.

And then he remembers.

“Mirèio, I should tell you – ”

“Hm?”

“I cannot dance.”

Her hand nearly slips from his, and stood this close to her taller frame, Cullen can almost feel her body caught in the attempt to move away; retreat sounding loud in the slope of her shoulders. 

“No,” Cullen nearly shouts, a little bubble of panic rising in his throat, “not that.” He does not know what his face must look like to her, but it stills her quick enough to ease the sudden jangling of his nerves.

“I truly cannot dance.” His words tumble out in a rush, and if he tugs too hard on her hands, squeezes her fingers tight, Mirèio makes no comment. “Templars do not make a habit of teaching young recruits to dance la volta. Or the gaillarde. Or the pavane.” 

“But you know what la volta is?” Mirèio returns, moving back into the heat of Cullen's thicker frame. She needs the words to smooth down the sudden bolt of fear; for a moment, she had thought he'd chosen to run. It is his right after all: to choose. 

What she does not say to him is this: _'I am not what most men want, and I would not have blamed you had you decided as much.'_

“Let us just say that Kirkwall was a strange city, and that it involved Viscount Hawke, and many nights spent forced to watch over the various highborns attending at the man's political events. Dull, pompous fool, the lot of them.”

Mirèio quirks an eyebrow, a slow grin unfurling on her mouth. “Oh, how dreadful.”

“Absolutely,” Cullen quips. “Hawke made an _effort_ to needle any Templar within shouting distance of himself and his companions. I think it was a manner of sport for him.”

“I can't decide if I admire Hawke, or want desperately to hurl him from the highest tower in all of Thedas. I have a sinking suspicion that Varric is not entirely the most trustworthy of narrators.”

“Maker,” Cullen laughs, “but what a sight that would have been.” Thoughts of Kirkwall and her Champion intrude, and they are most unwelcome. He will not stand here with Mirèio's hands in his and remember _Hawke_ , or _Bethany_ , or any other terrible day that is now only coloured by the shame such memories bring.

Not now.

Not here. 

The crowd whirls and folds around the pair stood in their midst, the flowing of wine and the rolling of drums distracting from the strangeness of the two unmoving points. 

“Forgive me, Cullen,” Mirèio begins, “but I hadn't thought of you simply not knowing how to dance. I assumed you'd had a little training. It has been my experience that talented swordsmen move beautifully on the dance floor.”

“Ah.” He chuckles – Kirkwall dissolving under the heat of her attention – and his cheeks pink again. “And now I am disappointed I cannot. You and Dorian – you danced with such grace.” 

_Should I tell her just how great a balm her sureness is?_ Cullen wonders, even as her fingers tighten around his, even as the smoky, gold-as-honey light filling the throne room to bursting, riotous splendour makes him flush with promise. _Should I tell her that I would very much like for her to move me through the steps as she did Dorian?_

He glances back at the great yellow banner hung against the sea of green and red, and cannot help but wonder who in the crowd knows of Mirèio as something other than the Right High, Most Holy Inquisitor. Who here knows of her from her days under the stones of her own House? Will any so gathered under Skyhold's halls carry the news of her conduct on this night back to the sea-salt and wind-swept shores of Ostwick? Back to her mother and father?

Her voice calls him back. 

“Well, joli, what do you propose we do? What is your solution to this little stumble in the course of the evening?” The little bells on her wrists are singing their own song; there is an uncomplicated patience held in the grip of her hand. 

All around him is her scent, her heat; in the hall is the riot of cedar, and woodsmoke, and the tang of perfume; in his head are words.

“I may not be able to dance, Mirèio, but I would, uh, I would like – ” 

“Ask.”

“I would like to watch. You. On the dance floor, that is.” If he stumbles a bit, he pays in no mind. At least, that is what he attempts to do. 

_Do not move_ , he tells himself. _Do not look away. Be sure._

“Oh?” She replies, a sudden brightness in her mouth. “Thank the Maker you've found your tongue.”

Cullen sputters, and then her hands are at his waist and his have found the slope of her shoulders. “I beg your pardon, Mirèio? I should have thought my opinions at the war table were a fine enough measure of the skill of my tongue.”

“Hardly,” is parried back with nimble laughter. “Though I will admit I do so love to hear your thoughts on those highborns and their 'ridiculous, petty requests'. Such vinegar in your mouth, joli. Your disdain is absolutely refreshing.”

The grin that creeps onto his face is so wide his cheeks begin to sting. “I am terribly sorry that I insulted the Duchess of I can't be bothered to remember by suggesting her request was a rank insult in the face of our current troubles.” Cullen chuckles. “After all, how could we expect her to look out of her rose tinted windows to see the hole in the sky, or the darkspawn magister knocking on our door?”

Mirèio throws back her head and laughs with all the power in her chest, teeth flashing in the smoky light, and Cullen wants nothing more than for each and every soul so gathered here to disappear. He wants nothing more than to be pinned under her gaze; longs for no other noise save her breath against his. 

“Did one of our men actually step on the train of her dress?”

Cullen shrugs, and the subtle tightening of her fingers on the point of his hip sends a lance of heat to his groin. He thinks of iron, of the spread of her shoulder's above him, and he must bite his cheek sharply to keep the _red_ out of his mouth. 

There is a quiet gleam of conspiratorial humour in his eyes; her reply is a dry, satisfied chuckle, pink tongue held in her teeth. 

She knows. She always does.

“I should send you to deal with highborns more often.” Mirèio hums, leaning down to nip at his ear lobe, feeling the shiver under his skin at the touch of her breath.

Oh but she'll make him _howl_.

“You've already earned quite the reputation, Cullen: the stiletto tongued Commander of the Inquisition's forces. A great lord of war – and a man who would sooner march nobles through a burning crater than give them a moment's time for their whingeing.”

“I should not like to know what Val Royeaux thinks of my conduct.” If his wondering is a little too sharp, Mirèio makes no noise over it. “But,” he continues, “the White Spire is no longer a part of my life.”

“I am glad,” Mirèio chuffs, a high, taloned gleam in her eyes. 

Cullen inclines his head and then they are moving, his hands sliding from her shoulders as they drift through the press and whirl. The jingle of her tread is musical, and when the crowd parts for them he feels an odd sort of satisfaction: it is so very easy to be tall in her company, to care for nothing save the arrows of their shadows moving forward together. 

She deposits him on the bench of their nearly empty table; oddly enough, Dorian is still seated where Cullen left him, busily chipping away at his Tevinter wine as if someone will steal it if he does not drink it first. 

“Oh,” he mutters, a furrow stitched between his brows, “whyever are the two of you back? Did our Commander step on your toes, ursa?” The more he drinks, the more he talks, the stranger and stranger the music of Tevene on his tongue becomes. He doesn't wish to be reminded of the land he comes from right now. 

“Hardly,” Cullen drawls, “but no matter how able a teacher Mirèio is, I would rather watch her work.”

Dorian puts his head down, forehead pressed to the table, and howls. 

“What is all this fuss about?” Josephine interrupts, folding down on the bench beside Cullen with an easy, measured grace. “I had no idea the Inquisition had procured hyenas for the evening's festivities.”

“Oh to the quick, my lady. To the quick.” Dorian's voice echoes loudly against the wood. And all of a sudden he is terribly frustrated. Perhaps if he himself were on firmer ground he would not be so _irritated_ by their inability to start up their little dance. As it stands, he'll chew her ear off come morning. Mostly he'll just ask her to hold his hand, and tell him he's not a fool for wanting the things that he wants. In the morning. For now, he'll drink and sulk as he pleases.

Josephine gives the Tevinter mage a spoonful of silvery laughter before turning to the Commander beside her: he cleans up beautifully, and it is _pleasing_ to see her handiwork in action. He is stunning. Truly. And so is the woman whose shadow falls over him. 

Like the sun and the shade. 

Like, oh what did she call it? 'So much black ink spilled on sunny gold.' Yes. Just like that. How wonderfully apt. 

And then Mirèio is bowing low, the long coil of her thickly plaited hair sliding over her shoulder, and whirling away in a jingle of bells and the sharp scent of orange oil.

“Where?” Josephine questions, her hands fluttering uselessly for a moment. “Where is she going?”

“Kirkwall provided few opportunities to learn to dance,” Cullen offers up, watching the fine lines of Mirèio's back as it is once more swallowed by the crowd,“ and I would prefer to learn by observation.” 

Josephine finds she must smother her laughter behind her hand; she knows there is a rosy flush on her cheeks, but she does not mind overmuch. “I am so glad you chose to attend, Cullen.” She murmurs, resting a hand on the man's knee. “This is our first festival together, and I was concerned you would not be comfortable...”

“Thank you, Josephine. Your kindness has been a gift.”

At first it had been a little nick against his skin every time _princesa_ left Mirèio's mouth with such naked care; it feels petty now, and he is most happy to be relieved of that feeling. Josephine truly is a wonderful woman – a dedicated, competent, talented princess – and he is daily ever more pleased to call her a friend.

“Think nothing of it, please.” Josephine returns with a gentle squeeze of her fingers atop Cullen's knee. “I am happy to help. Both of you.”

Cullen cannot manage to hold her keen, knowing gaze for long; he looks back to the dancers, to the wild-hearted bear prowling among them. At least until that bear stops, and a circle grows around her until she stands alone beneath the great chandelier. 

“In the spirit of the Wild Night,” she thunders, “I ask: who would like to dance?”

And suddenly he cannot quite swallow down the sharp needle of _want_ in his throat, heat pooling viciously between his legs. 

_Oh Maker's fucking balls,_ he thinks sourly, _you're not a sallow faced stripling getting half-hard at the sight of a shapely backside. Get a hold of yourself._ But she is prowling round in a languid circle, hands tucked behind her back: a haughty, predatory air in the curve of her frame. 

_Does she know?_ He wonders, breath tucked painfully under the bite of his teeth. _Does she do this intentionally? Does she know what her shape does to me?_

Her eyes find his, up goes her clever, cutting, grin, and Cullen must fold his hands over his groin as with as much subtlety as he can manage. 

Ostwick's great Bear knows. Of course she does.

_I know what I want from you, joli._

_I know what I want._

Her gaze is fire. Water. Quiet things on a sharp, seeking tongue. Benath his eyelids is a sword harness being wrapped around a yellow sash, a fat drop of blood reflecting in the equally red wax dripping above their heads.

_I will not look away._

Mirèio holds a hand aloft, and Cullen knows that hand is for him, is his alone, regardless of who steps into her reach.

Josephine remains utterly, blessedly silent. Whether by tact or by ignorance, Cullen cannot be bothered to fret over.

From a little ways down the table, he hears the first high notes of Sera's wild, rock-slide laughter. The little elvhen archer has jumped up onto the table, feet spread apart and fists on her hips – dress as red as summer cherries, as red as her cheeks.

“Oy!” she points, “none of you nug-faced noble bastards move an inch. I saw her first.” And then she is flying off the table and out onto the floor with a dazzling smile on her face.

“Quickly now, abejita!” Mirèio cries, colour high on her cheeks. “I am yours.”

“You know,” Josephine whispers, leaning in close enough to smell the Commander's soap, “if you needed dancing lessons, Cullen, I could have arranged that as well.” 

Sera barrels into the Inquisitor and Mirèio sweeps her up into a dizzying spin as if she weighs nothing at all. The elf in her arms shrieks with delight; Mirèio sets her down, and Sera must stretch up to keep her arms locked around the taller woman's neck. 

The muscles in his abdomen clench, breath going out of him in a sharp grunt. A blister of desire seeps out to into the curl of his toes, and his face is hot, scalp prickling sharply. Someone passes him a cup of wine, and for a moment he is entirely unsure if he should remove his hands or not. 

Josephine's mirth is a shiver of little wings, and he decides to be quick about it.

It does not help that her eyes have found his again; the weight of her gaze feels like an arrow thrust home.

There is a burst of applause, nobles twittering away behind twitching fans and the people of Skyhold laughing in genuine enjoyment; Maryden starts up a new, nimble-noted song, and the newly met partners marshall themselves for the coming dance. 

“Don't worry, Commander,” Josephine soothes, an all too aware grin on her cheery face, “we'll get this sorted out, I assure you.”

“Oh,” Cullen laughs, but it comes out a little thin, a little thick. 

Josephine must bite her tongue, a merry chuckle on lips. What a surprise this is, only it is not surprising at all and she is eager to see what is to come. Let no one say men like Cullen should not wear their desires on their skin; let no one say those desires are wrong, or something shameful to be dismissed. 

Besides, he's lovely like this: flushed and wanting. 

Restrained.

“Between myself and Leliana, we'll have you ready for Halamshiral.”

“I beg your pardon?” Cullen chokes, nearly spilling wine down the front of his fine tunic. “What? Why, in the Maker's name, would I go to the Winter Palace?”

“Oh, darling,” the Lady Ambassador sighs, patting his forearm, “did you really think you'd get to stay here? Did you think she wouldn't take you?”

Cullen must breathe through his nose, even as he watches Mirèio turn Sera about and lift her into the air before setting her back down again. Sera keeps pace beautifully: a little blade in the hands of a wild thing come down from the mountains. 

The sight is _magnificent_ and he must stifle the groan in his throat. 

_La Volta. Of course._

Her eyes find his again.

~ * ~

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wyatt claims the chapter title.
> 
> Cassandra's little poem to Cullen comes from Rumi's Kolliyaat-e Shams-e Tabrizi. I couldn't resist. I feel like Cassandra would adore Rumi, like, adore it to little pieces. But then I think about Regalyan and I make myself terribly sad.


	7. Fainting I follow

~ * ~

The Bull is snoring, face down on the table, and Sera is once again draped across his back, her knees tucked into the joints of his elbows and a half eaten peach clutched in one hand. Cassandra and Varric have disappeared, the Seeker and the dwarf leaning heavily against one another as best the odd pair could manage. Josephine is enjoying a drowsy conversation with a pair of Antivan merchant-princes two tables over, Blackwall at her feet like a gentled hound. Leliana vanished hours ago, some merry secret between her teeth. 

“I've had too much wine,” Cullen mutters sadly, “and you've had not half what Dorian has pushed at you, have you?” His face is distressingly hot, and the leg he's got over his knee begins to twitch, bouncing uselessly in an unsteady rhythm. 

“No,” Mirèio replies. 

“Is he asleep?” Cullen questions blearily, leaning out to see where the Tevinter mage has disappeared to. Somehow, the man has managed to tuck his legs up and nestle the rest of his frame against the bits of Bull that aren't covered by the little elf.

“Very much.”

The face above him is calm, still slightly flushed from the dancing and the laughing and the little game she'd played with the Antivan delegation involving a dagger and a scrap of silk tied round its hilt. He had watched that one with a touch too much interest.

“Forgive me,” he murmurs, tucking his chin into his chest, “I hadn't intended – why did I have so much to drink?” 

“Joli,” Mirèio says with a steady thread of patience, “when you are _ready_.” She uncurls her fingers to slide them under the man's chin. With the gentlest pressure, she tips his face back up to meet hers. 

“Nerves,” Cullen mutters sourly, even as the smile wins out. “It's been a long, long time.”

“I gathered as much.”

And then she pauses, something terribly gentle stealing into her eyes. “Can I offer you something else?”

Mirèio's fingers are the softest iron Cullen has ever known; he looks up into her face with a little flare of hope tucked away under the soft bits beneath his ribs.

“Yes,” is a whisper meant only for her.

“Give me half a turning of the glass, and then meet me in my solar. On my honour, it is nothing untoward,” she adds, offering him the chance to refuse. Again.

The best he can manage is a nod, and he is happy to find in place of her fingers beneath his chin that her hand is once more extended to him.

Waiting.

Always waiting.

She pulls him off the bench and they leave the snoring company, though Mirèio does stop to give Josephine her goodbye kiss, planting it deftly on the smaller woman's mouth.

“Thank you, Princesa," she says with a gentle smile on her flushed face, “this night was perfect beyond measure.” 

Josephine's eyes come alight, happiness burnishing her bright. “I am glad, my friend. The most happy.” She could not have planned a better evening. Could not have enjoyed herself more. Blackwall is snoring gently, his face mashed into her knee; she knows this will end, but it is too sweet, too gentle, to give up just yet.

The weekly replenishing of the crystal grace in her office tells her there is time left for them yet. 

With a quiet nod, the pair leaves the Antivan and her hound, the music of her voice lingering in the sweet tinkling of the bells around Mirèio's wrists.

Cullen notices a handful of Orlesian nobles huddled in the far corners of the hall, and they notice him. One of them makes a rude gesture to the other one stood beside him and Cullen must tamp down on the urge to show them just how like a Fereldan dog-lord he can be, and, teeth to their throat, march them out of Skyhold faster than they can blink. 

There is no doubt in his mind that there will be a whole new crop of wild, terribly inappropriate chatter that he'll have to go about tearing up by the roots come morning. If he's not careful, the barracks will burn to the ground around his ears if word of this gets out: the Commander and the Inquisitor leaving Skyhold's Satinalia celebrations arm in arm.

They separate in the courtyard, she to her solar and he to his office.

He doesn't stop to do anything other than dump a few cupfuls of snow into the tepid water in his kettle and wait for the chill to soak into the washcloth; flicking the little hourglass measure on his desk as if to encourage the sand to move faster, Cullen lifts one hand to the red mark on his skin, thumb brushing idly as he waits.

The snow melts and he scrubs the bitterly cold cloth over his face as quickly as he can manage. Clean asmhe can be, he stuffs the dirty cloth back into the kettle and roots around in one of the trunks for a cloak. And then the sand is spent and he is not nearly as drunk as he thought he was, and he is not walking nearly slow enough to be anything other than in an undignified rush.

Whatever she will give, he will have from her.

With a glad heart.

The night has turned unbearably cold, and the stars are brighter than ever against the sprawl of the horizon. All the world is quiet, even the trees and and the animals and the wind; Cullen stands before the stairs leading up to Mirèio's solar and sucks in a great breath.

Easy. He will let this be easy.

He will _try_.

The scent that greets him when he pushes open her door is familiar: mint and honey in a chipped, lovingly made tea pot. Cullen swallows, the familiar prickle of gratitude at the corners of his eyes. The moisture turns the woman stood before him into a wavering shape, and he must blink hard to clear it away.

“See?” the great Bear of Ostwick murmurs. “Nothing untoward. Just tea, and a bit of quiet.”

“Are you always so considerate, Mirèio?” Cullen half wonders to himself as he closes the door behind him. He tells himself that the finality of that iron bolt sliding home does not terrify and thrill him in equal parts. 

He fails rather miserably.

“No,” she chuckles, “that was something I had to learn. I was quite rough when I was younger. A little too concerned with my own satisfaction.” 

“Truly?”

“Yes,” Mirèio replies, mouth turning soft and crooked, touched by a little regret. “Tis hard to be kind, gentle, when you see only the chance to be exposed. Before my family began sending me as a representative of Houses Tolivara and Trevelyan I rarely took lovers for any span longer than a handful of weeks,” she says with a laugh, surprised by the noise, “and the north eastern lands taught me many things.” 

Cullen looks out beyond the line of Mirèio's shoulders, wholly uncertain what to do with that information. He would dearly like to know how many lovers she's had. And yet, he absolutely does not. His can be counted on a hand. He very much doubts the same may be said of hers. Tis nothing so petty as jealousy, only that he is afraid his experiences will not be enough to please her.

So he focuses on her quarters instead. 

The Inquisitor's rooms feel spare, clean, warm. Alongside the wide bank,of windows is a massive teakwood desk, books and scrolls stacked neatly but precariously high; two couches of slate-grey silk, and an armchair with little brass buttons; the banner of her House hangs above the cheerily crackling fireplace. A cluster of tall bookshelves forms a little library, and alongside that is a smaller table much like the one in her greenhouse – covered end to end in a multitude of green, thriving plants. Beyond the greenery and the scrolls is her bed, a sturdy trunk at its foot.

There is a quiet here he should have been expecting, but its reality surprises him nonetheless.

“Cullen?”

He jolts, brings himself back from his curious rovings.

“I know I have asked this before, but what is the east like?” he asks, glad to be given the time to find his words in the tangled mess of his thoughts. There are dozens of questions he'd like to ask, months worth of words; there is the desert, and his march towards water.

His gaze is restless, unsure if the cold has leeched enough of the wine from his blood to be in her company without embarrassing himself. Again. “Are those from Rivain?” he asks, fingers knotted together, mouth stuffed with a familiar hesitation. Perhaps if they talk of something neutral he'll dig out enough sense to talk to her like a man who knows what he wants.

_For pity's sake, man! Stop gawking in the doorway and move!_

Somehow how, Cullen manages to keep the awkward panic off his tongue. She moves, he is sure. He moves, and all is floundering and stumbling. He needs a place to stand. She needs to know where he stands.

“What?”

“The rugs?”

“Yes,” Mirèio huffs. “Come here, joli.”

And just like that, easy as one little breath after another, he's crossed the room and walked into her arms – quiet and sure, as always.

“Do you want me to tell you about it?” It only costs her a little coin to keep her voice calm, still as the surface of a windless lake.

“The rugs?” Cullen murmurs. Maker's Blood but she is always so warm; steady as stone. 

“No.”

Cullen frowns, opens his mouth. 

“The answer to your first question, of course,” is her reply, and she must bite her tongue to keep the laughter out of her mouth. His hesitation has unfurled again, but it is nothing her patience cannot endure. She will have him when he is ready. Not before. 

“Of course, whatever you will share.” And then she is leaning down ever so slightly, a smile on her lips, and, without thinking, Cullen lifts his face up to hers, wraps his hand round her lovely neck and tugs her down. 

This time, she does not give him any warning, only the bite of her teeth and the hot slide of her tongue against his. She hums into his mouth, tucks her pleased noise between his lips with a rough swipe of her tongue, and then returns with force, teeth clashing against his.

Cullen moans, needy and sweet under her mouth; Maker but his hands are strong, and it's been such a long time since she's had a lover as well-forged as she is; the clench and shift of his back under her palms is a thing of beauty and she wants to hook her fingers under that magnificent tunic and pull until he is bared before her. 

She nearly does. 

This is a powerful body beneath her hands, and that understanding is one she drinks down with something a shade too close to greed. But she lives and dies by her control, and so she lets that particular need slip through her fingers. After all, she has what she desires most right now – the rest will come soon enough. 

Cullen has come willingly. Eagerly.

But he will get no more than her mouth. Not while half-drunk on Tevinter wine. 

“Joli,” she breathes, brushing a kiss to the corner of Cullen's mouth, “that was what I wanted.”

“Ah,” Cullen shivers, fingers still curling against her neck, “I am glad. I wasn't sure. I – even now, it seems so much to ask.” And then, _Holy Maker_ , her hands are on his ass, sharp nails digging ever so slightly into his skin, and he cannot string out even a bit of sense to breathe. She buries her face into his neck, breath like fire, and hefts him closer still. This time he hasn't the teeth to keep silent, and there is a bitten off gasp on his tongue; he groans into her mouth, eager and far too hard. 

“That will fade with time,” Mirèio chuckles, nuzzling down the line of his throat. Soon enough she finds the clasp of his collar: a pretty, delicate thing, easily broken. She taps a finger against it, a question in her gaze. Cullen shivers against her, and lifts up his chin. 

“So sure of yourself, my lady?” The reply he manages is rough, strung through with the jangling weight of desire. 

“Ahah,” she pulls, the noise too soft under her tongue, and tugs the little birds at Cullen's neck away, pressing her nose to the sharp joint of his collarbone, “but I often am – sure.” She nips at delicate skin, teeth pressed against the flush painting across his neck: a milk and honey altar, bare enough to decorate as she pleases. 

He grunts, fingers burrowing into the plait of her hair, digging against the thick fabric of her robes. Seeking. And then he is laughing, struggling for breath under the strength of her hands on his body, and the bite of her mouth on his neck. “You truly are presumptuous.”

“Yes.” Mirèio sighs, flicking her tongue out moisten the newly reddened skin before pressing chilled lips to the mark. That tears a sharp noise from Cullen's throat – one he can't quite manage to swallow down – and she slides her lips over, chooses another patch of skin that tastes like silverite and clove to mark as she pleases. 

_Noisy,_ is the thought she hums to herself. _He will be loud. Very loud._ The anticipation is intoxicating, searing. She wants to laugh, delight gripping tight in her chest. _Who ever would have expected this fiercely gentle creature to be so vocal with his pleasure?_

She drifts back to his mouth, pulling his lower lip between her teeth with a growl. “You have no idea, joli. I did warn you, if you remember?”

“Did you?” Cullen rasps, words tumbling out hotly, and altogether too slick. “I must not have been listening.” 

“You were. I told you I was not the most gentle partner to be had, and then I promised to put your knees in the dirt. That seemed to _delight_ you well enough.”

“I was disappointed you didn't.” That memory is one of his favourites; he'll not tell her how many times he's taken himself in in hand and found release in the dusty heat of that moment. Often, their sparring ends quite differently, and when he comes it leaves him scraped raw and wholly dissatisfied. Now it is different. Oh now he'll never be satisfied with own hand, not when he can have something more than a handful of moments coloured by an unmet need. 

“I know.”

Cullen huffs, shifting against her iron-banded grip, save all that manages to do is grind his crotch into hers. He makes a noise like a wounded animal, and the red climbs up and down his body until he fears he'll burst into flames. 

Mirèio makes an odd rumbling noise that is not quite a chuckle and palms Cullen's ass hard. His cock presses against her thigh and she grips him again, hard enough to bruise, before letting go and easing her hand up to force a little room between their bodies. 

“You wanted time, Cullen,” she gentles, “take it.”

“Did I?” He scoffs, tamping down on a welt of disappointment stinging away against his ribs. “Must you be so careful?” If he mutters these words with a touch of sourness, it appears to roll off the taller woman's back like water on feathers.

“Yes,” is her steady, stone-strong reply, “I must.” 

They are standing a little apart, and the sudden cold is intolerable to Cullen. No one has ever. He has never. He is nearly dizzy with promise.

“Sit,” Mirèio urges, giving her command over with a kiss entirely too gentle for Cullen's current state of flush. “I'll bring you some tea.”

The collar of his tunic is still spread wide, his throat and neck made slick, red and stinging; the slight chill in Mirèio's quarters puts un-gentle fingers through the fire under his skin.

He's entirely unsure if he's had too much wine, or not enough.

The rugs truly are magnificent, he thinks as he weaves his way towards her fine couches; when he sits, he finds he must collect his breath and his thoughts with a steadier hand. He knows what he wants to tell her. No. What he must tell her: why there is still hesitation lurking in his bones, where there is none in his heart. 

Her shadow falls over him, and her dark shape passes over a steaming cup of mouthwateringly sharp mint and honey tea. 

Sinking onto the opposite end of the couch, Mirèio finds she must call Cullen back from wherever he has wandered to.

“That is from Rivain as well. In the summer months the dhemeshii – taverns – brew it cold, and all the souks sell it by the water-skin.”

The suddenly quieted man beside her chuckles, and an achingly bittersweet smile lights up the hard lines of his face. “Strange,” he murmurs, “that you have seen so much of the world and I have had to be content with books and the occasional tale shared by templars on rotation. I am beginning to see why so many call the Circles a prison. Until recently, I had not thought – well – that I had been in one as much as my charges.”

“Cullen,” Mirèio replies, stiff lead on her tongue, “I cannot imagine what it must have felt like – to wake up one morning and realize _that_.” The noise that leaves her mouth is cutting, angry. “And you had so little means of escape. At least I had this.” Her hand flashes up and she points to the heavy looking gold ring on her right hand.

Cullen has seen the seal that ring makes only a handful of times: an Antivan starling in flight, a opened pomegranate in its little talons. He knows Josephine wears her own round her neck, and its imprint is a magnificent peacock feather and an elegant quill nestled under a half moon of curling Antivan script. 

“What better way for my parents to hide their mage-child away than to send me farthest from the lands held by Ferelden and Marcher templars.”

Cullen does not care to hide the welt her words draw upon his skin. From here to the shores of Ostwick, the Order has made itself a banner of violence and cruelty so rank even highborns have learned to fear its touch. How shameful. How wretchedly, utterly shameful. The knowledge sits in the pit of his belly, crudely twisted and sharp as a little knife. 

“House Tolivara has older, stronger ties to Rivain than it ever had to southern Thedas,” Mirèio continues, steady and carefully blank, “and they knew I could find teachers not too distant from its reach. Teachers who would not turn me over to the Order, or seek to use their knowledge as power over my family. Of course they could not send me til I was old enough to bargain and trade like any other merchant-prince's heir.”

“How old were you when you first went to Antiva? To Rivain?” Tis the safest question he knows how to ask. Anything else could lead to disaster.

_How can she sit here and speak to me with such ease? How can she be so gentle in my company, knowing what I have done?_

“Sixteen summers. By the time I was eighteen, I was a menace. My tutors never managed to teach me archery, or singing, or how to write poems that weren't dirty little tavern songs. I was too busy with other, more pressing matters,” she laughs, rubbing a hand under her chin. “Sera never tires of reminding me how incompetent I am with a bow.”

“Wait,” Cullen questions. “You cannot handle a bow? Is that not some vital part of a highborn's skill-set? How do you hunt for sport?”

Mirèio shakes her head and scrubs her hands down her face. “No. I hunt to eat, not for sport. That was another thing Llorenç could never get me to do without my big mouth making a ruin of the event. And honestly, there wasn't much need for me to learn how to shoot well enough to kill something when I could launch my target a hundred feet into the air and then light it on fire before it fell back to the earth.”

“That is a very vivid description, Mirèio.” Cullen chokes, mouth suddenly too full of mirth for anything else. 

_Leave these thoughts alone_ , echoes in his head. _Leave them be. Be here with her._

“The first time I managed that little trick my cousin shrieked like a hen. And then he hit me over the head with his bow and made me swear never to do that again. Of course, as I am wont to do, I did nothing of the sort.”

And just like that, Cullen is laughing, trying desperately to cover over his chuckling with a cough. For a moment he allows himself to wonder what it would have been like to wander with her. To have been raised up a knight in service to her House. To have begun as a farmer's son along the bristling, wind-raked shores of her cradle. 

He wonders what it would have been like to stand at her side as she ambled through the rivers of her sheep, her great ram making merry music behind them. 

He wonders what it would have been like to watch her fear fall away as Dairsimuid's spiral towers struck up into the horizon, and she could go out amongst its people without the shadow of the Chantry hanging over her like a pall.

This is as good a time as any to share something quiet about the life he scarcely remembers, no thanks in part to the lyrium and his own desire not to tarnish the better memories he'd managed to keep from its oblivion. The very same ones he fought to keep from the demons in Kinloch.

He takes a breath and does not think about rocks, or a long, perversely sudden fall. Just like that, he is offering up, speaking, heedless and open-handed. 

“Before I managed to convince my father I would only be happy if I was allowed to join the Templar Order, I used to make a habit of, well,” Cullen stumbles, embarrassed heat touching his cheeks, “roaming about the village in an old apron of my mother's.”

“What?” Mirèio interrupts, her eyebrows steadily creeping up. A cautious smile sits at the edges of he mouth, waiting to know if it is welcome or not.

“I press-ganged my older sisters into stitching Andraste's sword on its front, and I cobbled together a wooden sword and an oddly dented old helm I'd found in the shallows of a river one summer when I was,” Cullen hums, “no more than seven. I used to pretend to be a templar, defending the other children from demons and apostates.”

The word leaves his mouth before he can snatch it back. He looks over to the woman seated beside him; he doubts if he has a single breath in his lungs. It feels as if he's back on that noisy, white-washed training yard, watching her measure her patience by the span of hands between them. 

Mirèio makes a noise like she's swallowed her tongue. “Cullen,” she begins, “I am not going to turn you out on your ear because you think, you thought, as every other soul in southern Thedas does.” 

Perhaps there is a question in the mess of her words, but she's good enough to bury it deep, leave it for another day. Leave it for _never_ , perhaps. But that is a cowardly thing to do. Even in her own thoughts, she knows that much. 

“I have heard much worse from many, many others.” Hands spread wide as if to make room, as if to grasp something that is not there, Mirèio shrugs, falling silent. “This is not an easy thing to speak of, and I – perhaps it would be best if we did not.” Her fingers make restless motions against her palms. “It may be better to simply refrain from speaking about templars and mages. I'm not here to twist your arm into digging up unpleasant memories.” 

Cullen sucks in a lungful of air, and finds that he is, he is angry. “Must you be so accommodating?” The words tear out of him, sharp tools built with the intention to cut. He cannot call them back. They are gone. “Always it is 'I will not pry', and even now you know nothing of what I've done, other than what is in that ugly book Varric wrote. I do not want to say these awful things, not in your company, not in any one's company. But they are there, always. How can you be gentle with a man who has done what I have done?”

“You were little more than a child, Cullen!” Mirèio bellows, face sharper than any blade. “Shall I go rummaging through your past for all the ugliness the Chantry and their fucking Order has sown in its wake? Do you truly want that from me? Why? Am I to hold your hands to the fire as punishment for a past you cannot change?”

“Yes!” He fires back, a deadly stitch of grief, of rage, of years spent angry and alone and afraid pricking in his lungs. “How can you not? If you do not know, you cannot, you will change your mind. I held that sunburst brand in steady hands.” Cullen punctuates – each word a little hammer meant to drive home something terrifying, something made of paranoia and hatred and the summons of a Knight-Commander and her holy war against the wickedness of magic.

He'd believed. Oh how he'd believed.

“Because you do not bear all the fault, Cullen! I – ” 

That strikes him square on the jaw and suddenly he is enflamed, incensed, and he cannot blame it on the wine. “Of course it was my fault. Are you mad? You cannot. Blame doesn't vanish because you will not see it, Mirèio!”

“You will let me finish,” Mirèio hisses, and the words are as cold as any creeping winter frost.

Cullen stills, breathes red, sees black. Sees a great, twisted sword and a Champion torn between lover and duty. Between the kingdom of the Self, and the demands of the City.

“Fault is a fickle thing. Easy to cling to. Hard to let go of.” She snaps, teeth and eyes brighter and sharper than claws. “I am not saying your actions were not your own, that you were not in control of those choices. You chose. But you did not do so in a void. You are responsible. But so was your Knight-Commander. So is the Order, and the Chantry it serves.”

“What?” Cullen breathes, red and black turning white. 

“The Chantry, the Order.” Mirèio murmurs, fingers curling uselessly. “I.” She breathes, rakes a hand through her hair, fingers tangling in the laurels at her temple. “Who you were before – the little boy in the fields, the one with justice and righteous intent in his heart – did they take that boy from you?” 

He does not know what to say, and he stares at her as if she's just unstitched a terrible wound. One he'd never had the hands to tend to. 

“Forgive me,” Mirèio speaks, regret bright on her tongue and her shoulders climbing up around her ears: a naked shame on her face. “That was too far. I ask too much. Always do.”

“No,” Cullen grits out, even through the red pounding under his ribs, “you, you have every right to ask. Because I do not understand how you cannot want to know.” He laughs and it is entirely too bitter. So bitter, so black and sour, it shocks him as much as it does her. “We never speak of the templars. You never ask, never ask me what I did.” Without any real intent, he finds his palms stinging – fingers curled up too tight. “You never ask me how Meredith chose her Captains, or why. You never ask me how many mages I wronged, how many I allowed to be harmed because I could see nothing wrong with my Knight-Commander's choices.”

“Cullen,” Mirèio warns, a hard, high-handed chill in her voice.

“Do you know how many mages I made Tranquil? Did Varric's book tell you that?” It's a red-soaked whisper so fine, so thin it is like a little blade held to the edges of his mouth. If he opens too wide, it will cut him so deeply. He will _bleed._

She needs to hear this, needs to ask. If she does not know, she will change her mind.

He is so sure of that, so certain of its truth. There is nothing else in his mind but that thought.

“Joli – stop picking at this.”

“No, you will listen!” Cullen snaps, voice flexing up into shouting, into the lash of anger he feels on his tongue. “Is there nothing in you that seeks to know? I – I do not see how this could not. Could not cause you pain.” 

Oh Maker, but he did not come here for _this._ The greenhouse was fire enough, but he cannot keep his hands out of the coals. 

She does not know what to do with the man before her; he's bent, spine twisted and eyes too bright. Bleeding all over the couch. To give in will cause him pain, but he's driving after it like a hound after a little, fleeing hare. “Do you need to tell me, Cullen? Will that help you? Because I do not need to know.” 

Cullen's head snaps up, eyes suddenly narrowed. “How can you not want to know? Does it not, do I not disgust,”

Her hand strikes out like a snake, covers over his mouth; fury breathes in her features, he has not seen its like since since the Red Templars came down from the mountains. 

“Never use that word in reference to yourself ever again. I will brook no disobedience from you in this matter.”

Anger flares up again, like a spark laid against brittle tinder, and he is shouting, fingers curled round her wrists. “How can you say such a thing? How can you not want to know? I allowed terrible crimes to be committed in the name of the Chantry, in the name of the Maker. I turned away for _years_. Shut my eyes. Refused to listen. If we had met in Kirkwall, if you'd been sent to the City of Chains, I would not have cared for you. And you, you would have _hated_ me. Despised me, utterly. You would have been right to do so.”

Mirèio's palms flash up, but Cullen is still shouting, something terrible clawing away under his skin. The room is pressing down upon him and in the silence between each heaving breath there is the singing of that twisted, too-red sword. 

Words. So many words. So many memories so full of ugly, vile words from his own mouth. 

_Mages are not people like you and I, Champion._

Without the lyrium, it is so easy to remember. 

His breath is so loud, even in his own ears. So loud.

And then her hands are on him and his face is pressed into the cushions, Mirèio's considerable weight on the back of his thighs. Her breath at his neck, elbows on either side of his ears.

“Stop.” She commands. “Be still. Be still with me, Cullen. Stop.”

The thunder in his ears is his breathing and her voice. They clash like giants, like savage things hurling stones, hoping to drive the other away.

“Come back. Be still.” The voice commands, and it is built like earth – like rich, rain soaked earth. “Squeeze your eyes shut, and then open them again. Squeeze your fingers together, then let them go. Come back.” 

Cullen stills – inch by painstaking inch. His fingers twitch and he curls them tight. Eases them open again. He squeezes his eyes shut, and then opens them again. 

_Andraste protect me, I have fallen apart in front of her. Why? Why now? Not after this night. I chose. She offered and I chose. Is that not enough?_

“Breathe. Breathe with me, joli.”

He does. Her chest rises and so does his; the cushions take take the wetness from his eyes – allows him a scrap of dignity.

“I do not ask you of the templars because I will not ask you to hurt yourself for my sake.” There is grief laid fast to her tongue, and she must find that quiet, unmoving stone again. “Never hurt yourself because you believe I cannot see who you are. Leave that man where he belongs. Let him go.” 

Beneath the coursing of her own breath she can hear his little clench of sorrow: a ragged, quiet sob. A noise made of broken glass, and knotted thorns. It's an ugly sound. Ugly enough to make her hurt for his sake. She's not felt that sort of care in a long, long while. 

“I asked you if the Chantry took that bright-hearted little boy from you, Cullen. What is your answer?” She gentles, burying her face between the sharp valley of his shoulder blades. 

She knows the answer, only, she is truly unsure if Cullen will ever genuinely believe the same.

He breathes. Feels the weight of her like an anchor. 

Like a stone tower. 

A leader.

A friend.

A lover. 

_Ask, joli, and it shall be so._

“No.” The word leaves him and he cannot call it back. “No.”

Mirèio shifts down to press her lips against the nape of Cullen's neck with the utmost gentleness, and prays he cannot feel the salt on her cheeks. “I see who you are now, and that is enough. It is enough, joli.” 

He breathes. He breathes and he breathes and the world settles back into place – her lips at his neck, her body atop his. A wordless, quiet comfort. A gentle easing. 

“So you had to have a city burn down around your ears before you could find a better way,” Mirèio continues, “that does not diminish your success. You chose. You opened your eyes. That you did so alone, in the face of absolute ruin,” her voice cracks on that word, bright and sharp as glass, “is a victory in its own right. That was no small distance you climbed, Cullen. You found a better way.”

Cullen swallows down a hot, prickling cry; he does not know what to do with her words. With her summons that falls over him like a rallying cry. Is it a weakness to accept? Or a greater strength to admit he's not climbed far enough, that he needs a hand to pull him the rest of the way? No. Not that he needs. But that he wants. That he would _prefer_ a hand, rather than continue alone.

_Your sword is mine._

He must tell her. She deserves to know. She's warm and strong above him, and tis only a little farther to go before he's given her all that she needs to know.

“There is one thing Mirèio, that I demand you hear. You need to hear it. You must.” Her willingness to let the subject of his former life lie undisturbed in the dirt had been an unlooked for blessing, but now he finds her silence and his pulling has tangled them up enough to hurt. To cut.

“Do you need me to leave you be? Do you desire to be alone?” Mirèio murmurs, shifting up to clamber off and let the man sort himself out as he pleases, at least until she feels one of Cullen's arms grab at her elbow, fingers scrabbling at her skin.

“No. Please,” comes tumbling out in a wet, jangling rush, “not yet.”

“As you wish.”

And then her weight is back, her breath at his neck, her heat in his bones. 

“Tell me what you need to, joli.”

“Do you know what gives templars their abilities?”

He will do this. He will. After, there will only be Ferelden between them. 

“No,” she admits, a touch of shame colouring her words. Templars. Maker's fucking holy Throne, will it always be the templars between them? 

She finds her voice again, though all is brittle, thin as a thread held to a blade. “I – my parents kept me away from Ostwick for many years, and Llorenç hates the Order as much as I do. From his teaching I learned only to avoid. How to defend against being smote. How to fight them, how to win. Outside of those lessons, what I know of templars is only what I learned from the ones I killed, from the one who marked me. After that _incident_ I was less inclined than ever to know more.”

Maker's holy Light, but if that templar wasn't already dead by her hand, Cullen would dearly love to cut the man down a second time. 

The Order has done such violence to them both, and he doesn't know how to tell her so. Because if he tells her just how profoundly he hates all that the Order has become, if he tells her that he finds no satisfaction in old memories, oaths, or choices, how can he ask her to forgive him for remaining under the Order's banners for more than fifteen years? If they cannot speak of these things now, how can he give her what amounts to an excuse? For what excuse could he give her other than because, at the time, he truly had believed in the _rightness_ of his actions.

It is an ugly, ugly reason, and there's not a thing in all of Thedas that could compel him to give it to her face. It's so ugly he would sooner cut out his own tongue than speak it aloud.

_Mages are not people like you and I, Champion. They are weapons, and should be treated as such._

_My sister is a mage, Knight Captain. You took her from me. Tell me, did she remain a person until you tore her from her family? Or did she stop being Bethany the moment you and yours realized House Amell had a mage in their ranks?_

No.

“Lyrium gives templars their abilities.” Cullen breathes, blood in his throat and a terribly red ache in his chest. 

It's frighteningly easy to do this, to speak this to her with his face pressed against grey silk. Easier not to have to watch her face – keeps him from hunting out the rejection he so fears to see in her eyes. 

“Without it we cannot function, but it controls us as well.” He finds himself biting the inside of his cheek, anything to wipe away the memory of lyrium against his tongue. He'd sooner taste blood. “Those who are cut off from its use suffer greatly. Some go mad. Others die – ”

“What?” Mirèio interrupts, that little stitch between her brows unravelling into bristling confusion. “The Chantry gives you the raw mineral? Unprocessed? That is beyond dangerous!” There is a cold, cold rage burning under her skin, and her confusion shifts, falling into a directionless, formless anger: an oppressive hand gripping tight.

“In the beginning, it is a blessing. You are strong. Sure. Capable. Fear nothing and no one. And then time passes,” the thorns are growing thicker, and he must swallow them down, along with the blood, “and you need it. Cannot be without it.”

“Cullen.”

“I no longer take it.”

Above him he hears a jolt of alarm; the sound moves through his chest, shivering against the sudden bite of nausea in his mouth. 

“After Kirkwall I could not bear the thought. I could not stay chained to the Order any longer.” And then Mirèio is touching him, her warm, rough fingers smoothing over the nape of his neck, down to the hollow of his throat, thumbs easing over his collarbones in steady strokes. The little marks strung round his neck sting sharply, beautifully. 

Her fingers move away, and then it is her palms against the line of his shoulders, against his back, easing the hot wire between his shoulder blades from beneath his skin.

“I haven't taken it since joining the Inquisition. It's been months now.” Her hands still over points of his shoulder blades and she goes stiff, silent. 

“Cullen, joli, if this can kill you –” And a hundred little moments string together like an ugly ring of bruises; he's been staggering around Skyhold with a great, open wound on his body for months, and she hadn't been intelligent enough to piece together why.

He shakes his head, wants her hands to close over more than his shoulders. “I have not died yet. Cassandra and I have an arrangement. She monitors my condition. I trust her judgement.”

“So this is your challenge, Cullen?”

“Yes,” and the word leaves his tongue with a force he does not feel.

“Thank you for choosing to tell me.” Mirèio speaks, feeling a wide, unwelcome rift between herself and the man she cares for. “I wish I had more for you than that.”

“Your understanding is enough.” Cullen twists, turning his neck enough to see her face above him. He finds she is looking at him with clouded eyes, inscrutable and all too sharp. For the first time since that night on the battlements he sees hesitation in her gaze, in the set of her shoulders. 

He hates it. Wants it gone. Never wants to see its like again.

The minutes pass and something sharp in him twists, cuts down deep and red. 

_We have not raised our voices to each other since Redcliffe._ Cullen realizes, understanding pricking sharply. _And we just made a fair go of savaging one another like animals baited into a trap._

He pushes that thought away with such violence it leaves him reeling, clinging to the edge of a precipice. 

“Please,” leaves his lips, “just,” he breathes, “whatever you will give.”

And then the Bear is all around him, pulling him up from the couch and into her arms. The jolt of her body against his drives the air from his lungs, and for a moment he is a small child again, seeking comfort in the arms of someone he believes will make everything better.

He feels _safe._

Neither of them speak, and the silence is deafening. 

_Say something, please,_ beats away under Cullen's tongue in an uneven tattoo. Mirèio has been kind beyond measure, patient beyond reason. Judicious. Lenient. Compassionate. He has toiled endlessly to feel worthy of those things she hands over to him with such ease, with such careless generosity. And now it feels as if he's tumbled down, back to the training yard and the snow and the cold, measured caution. 

“Say something, Mirèio.” 

The woman wrapped around him laughs, only it is nothing like laughter and entirely too sour.

“Are you certain you want anything further out of my mouth, Cullen?”

Something in him loosens, something red and soft. He is glad for it, despite the hurt.

“Mirèio,” Cullen breathes, though her name leaves his lips more akin to a plea than a reassurance, “anything you will give, I would have.” 

A noisy gust of air blows over his head, but she softens nonetheless.

“Perhaps now is as good a time as any to tell you why I invited you here,” Mirèio says thickly, words like a little blade in her mouth, “before either of us loses our nerves. Unless, unless you would prefer to go now. I had not expected – Maker's fucking breath – I hadn't thought we'd end up like this tonight.”

All Cullen can manage is a wet, ugly chuckle. His face is pressed into her neck as if he's trying scrape something off his skin. Or take something from hers. 

“No, no I do not want to go,” he digs up, offers it to her gladly. Quietly.

Mirèio draws in a deep breath, lets its sharpness rattle around in her chest until she feels shored up enough to answer. “As you wish. So long as you are sure, Cullen.”

“I am,” he murmurs into her neck with a little press of his lips. 

“Wonders never cease,” she sighs, but all her words earn her is that Cullen digs in closer, tighter. 

Stubborn. 

Beautiful, stubborn, injured Cullen. But strong. Stronger than she could ever have imagined. 

“After all that. You still – ”

“Mirèio,” is not entirely a warning, and yet not entirely a reminder, “do not treat me like glass. I do not want that from you.” 

“Come to bed, joli.” It is a gentle request, one she makes soft and sweet, nose buried in the curls at Cullen's temple. “Take off your armour.”

There is a little, painful bubble of laughter caught in his throat, and it makes a sorry sound when it leaves; without thinking he tightens his arms around her, fingers digging into her shoulder blades, and nods.

Mirèio decides it is best to let Cullen choose how long he wants to stay in her arms.

They stand crushed together for more moments than either one of them has fingers and toes, and her quarters grow darker, quieter around them.

While his breath courses over the hollow of her throat, she thinks on the strangeness of life, of her life and his. On the utter and absolute insanity of a templar and a mage trying to patch up the other's wounds. If some fool had told her one day she would care for a templar with passion enough to make her other lovers seem like faded ink on old, brittle parchment she would have laughed in their faces. 

The words of Asha's last letter come to her, even as she can feel Cullen's breathing even out, that crackling, sharp-toothed misery under his skin easing with every passing moment: 'love outruns hate. And honestly, enti qamari, tis likely the one thing not even you can outrun. I beg of you, do not try to.' 

When Cullen looks up the hesitation is gone; his eyes are dry, and his voice as steady as the arms still holding them fast together. “I don't think our Josephine will be pleased to hear I've slept in this fine tunic.”

“And what a shame that would be,” Mirèio laughs, feeling as if she has been struck clean through the sternum, “considering how beautiful you look in that colour, joli.” Now she understands what Cullen spoke of in the greenhouse. Trial by fire. And she is not entirely sure she's come through half so well as she would have liked. 

“I've been called many things, Mirèio, but that word has never been one of them.”

She brings their foreheads together, and unwinds her arms from around his back despite his soft noise of protest. “Not even at one of those dreadful, frustrating parties held by the esteemed Viscount? I can hardly believe that no highborn man or woman every told you something of that nature.”

Cullen finds himself chuckling inexplicably, a thin needle prick of grief easing out with the sound. “Templar armour is not known for being a great statement of current fashion.”

“Whyever not? I'm sure you looked lovely in those skirts.”

“It was not a skirt,” he bristles, more laughter bubbling to the surface, wicking away the broken glass in his throat, “it was a band.”

Easy. Maker help him. Let this be easy.

“Splitting threads, joli?”

Cullen huffs, lets her nudge him towards the modest, neatly made bed. 

There is a massive Trevelyan yellow blanket draped atop the large mattress, and it bears her crest on the finest damask he's ever seen: the black bear and the white hart laid out on a field of spindle-sharp mountain flowers. His fingers brush over the fabric and he finds equally fine wool has been used as lining. 

This blanket is the richest thing in the mighty Inquisitor's chambers. 

A blanket from her home.

Is the richest thing in her possession.

_Oh,_ he thinks, the exclamation shaped like giddy laughter, _I have made myself a liar – this is so much more than lust. This has never been lust._

Before he can protest, Mirèio pushes her hand between his shoulder blades and he goes tumbling face first into the bed with an undignified squawk.

“I'll get you a night shirt.” She murmurs, tongue tucked into her cheek. “Take your boots off and stop thinking so very hard. I can see the little cogs turning from here.”

“It is a very fine coverlet, Mirèio.” Cullen sighs, twisting on the bed until he is looking up at her. The sudden burn of desire that crowns her handsome face is so naked his breath falters in his chest. “I shouldn't like to ruin something so fine.”

Her eyes narrow, and the paint artfully brushed across her lids turns her into a toothsome wolf with a cunning, cutting mouth. “You will sleep under my House's banner tonight, Cullen, and it would please me greatly to know you do so willingly. If you are not, tell me now.”

“I am willing,” he breathes. 

Hang the nightmares. Perhaps the Maker and his Bride will be kind to him tonight. Kinder than they are wont to be, at least. Hang it all, everything. He's done stumbling around bleeding and crying in front of her like some sad, broken bird. 

No more. 

_No more._

“Good. Try this on while I go find my own.” And then she is smiling, leaning down over him like a great black tower. The man sprawled on her bed brings her his lips with such readiness it is nearly obliterating; it takes every ounce of her control not to simply slide atop him, put her hands between his legs and make him curl into her touch. He even opens his mouth before she can trace her tongue against his lips.

No. 

Not yet.

When she pulls away Cullen finds he does not want her to go; the hunger burning in Mirèio's face is something akin to a hot blade laid against his skin, and he welcomes the fire. Anything in exchange for the misery they just wrote across each other's skin. 

And then she is gone, golden laurels rustling like wings and bells tinkling sharply in the silence.

He keeps still as stone until he hears the creaking of a trunk being thrown open. He'd dearly like to blame the wine for that mess, but he knows otherwise. 

_It is more a question of worth, my friend._ He had not been lying to Dorian. It was still a question. Only now – now perhaps it will be a little less cutting. 

When he sits up all the world spins drunkenly under his gaze; his fingers slip trying to pry his boots off but he manages well enough. Unbuttoning the tunic carefully, Cullen slides the garment off as gently as possible, mindful of the delicate stitching. Next, he peels the gloves off his hands, though he has to wipe the sweat off on his breeches, and tugs the nightshirt over his head. 

“Mirèio,” he calls, “where shall I put the clothes?” He tells himself he will not look up, that he will give her privacy, but his eyes are traitors and they make him a liar. 

“Just leave them atop the chest,” Mirèio replies, laughter as warm as the fire, “the one at the foot of the bed. We'll tend to them in the morning.”

Her back is to him and she is bare to the waist, the heavy braids of her hair still bound by her gold twine. 

_Andraste preserve me._

A hand curls up to drag the rope of her hair over her shoulder and heat unfurls in Cullen's belly, slick and vicious, at the sight of her naked back: there is power in every finely cut line, and her thickly plaited muscles shift enticingly beneath honey brown skin. 

Mirèio is not a delicate woman – and her nakedness does not diminish the sheer force of her body. It is the frame of a warrior. A knight. A powerful working she has honed under her own hands.

Just like his own.

Cullen knows his shoulders are broader – that he is thicker and more widely built than she is – but she is taller, and her magnificent legs give her a fearsome advantage when it comes to sheer, brutal strength. 

The woman stood before him truly could take what she wanted from him. There would be no complaint from his mouth. 

No. 

No, not would, not any more.

Now there _will_ be no complaint from his mouth. 

If it is necessary, he will beg her to do so.

She turns and Cullen tears his eyes away, back to the fine damask under his hands. 

His breathing picks up as her footsteps draw nearer, and he finds there is an odd note of laughter on his tongue. This is ridiculous: a grown man sneaking glances at the woman he desires to have take him as her lover. A grown man too busy tending to his own shadows to ask for more.

“I trust the glimpse was to your satisfaction?” Mirèio murmurs, teeth bright and all too pointed.

Cullen buries his head in his hands and lets the laughter win. 

“How did you know?” he groans.

“Experience,” is her bare-faced reply.

The bed dips under her weight and Cullen twists to meet her; she's left her braids in. And then his hand is rising up of its own accord despite the voice in head shouting at him to stop.

“May I?” falls off his tongue in a rush. 

Surprise kindles to life on her face and his fingers curl into his palms uselessly. “I did not mean to presume...”

“Cullen,” Mirèio gentles, “I was only surprised.” Without another word, she bends her head to his touch. “Decide,” she continues with a wry tilt of her lips, “and then ask me for it.”

“I'll try.”

And then she is near again, and his fingers slide through her hair to unwind the intricate wealth of her braids. The twine trickles into his hands like spun gold, and the sight of her face made soft – eyes half shut and mouth turned gentle by the motion of his fingers – is too gratifying for words. 

Once all her clever knots are undone, Mirèio leans in and gives her thanks with a little brush of her lips against his, a little press of her tongue. This earns her an equally little moan and Cullen's hand slides down to rest against her neck, thumb moving in slow circles under the tender skin of her earlobe.

Cullen stares up into Mirèio's face, watches that silver'd, crooked smile of hers unfurl with pleasure thrumming under his skin. If there are questions in her eyes, he cannot mark their trails.

She pushes, wraps an arm around his back and eases him down; Cullen goes without making a single noise. Perhaps this should shock her, but there's not enough room in her head for that. 

Bunching up a fistful of her coverlet, Mirèio rakes the blankets down. Cullen lifts his hips up, under the pretence of helping, and there's not enough restraint in her to keep the growl between her teeth. It leaves her mouth too red, and it paints the same all over Cullen's bared throat.

“Andraste's mercy, Cullen,” she rasps, “roll over. Tuck your legs up.”

He does, heart hammering in his chest like a bird in flight.

Quick as a fox after a little mouse she presses his back to her chest, drawing her legs up to curl his shorter frame into her taller one. A gentle curve he can break away from as he desires.

“Breathe,” she cautions, content to wait until the man in her arms settles into her bed. 

“I can't remember the last time I shared a bed with someone,” Cullen manages; Mirèio's body is a tower of warmth that is slowly soaking into his bones. The steady rise and fall of her chest is oddly comforting, and it eases the sharpness out of his lungs.

“Is this too much, Cullen?”

“Not enough,” he mutters, “not at all.” Maker, but he doesn't know where _that_ came from. 

“My apologies, joli,” Mirèio replies, bringing up her unmarked hand to brush her fingers through his hair, “but that is all I have for you right now.” She doubts she'll ever grow tired of this colour, of these curls. 

_This man will be the death of me,_ she laments. _I will give him whatever he wants; I will only make him beg if it is a pleasure of his to do so. But begging or not, I will have him sing every lovely note his body is capable of making. Once I am sure. Once he is sure._

Bringing her right arm up, she curves it over his body to rest it against his chest. A beat of her heart passes and she is wholly, utterly surprised to find his hand closing around her wrist. 

“No?” she questions.

His fingers stay twined with hers, pressing her palm flat to his skin.

“Hardly.” Cullen replies. “More of an,” he pauses, tongue tied up awkwardly, “more of an anchor,” he finishes. “As before.”

“Ah,” Mirèio drawls, wonder cutting through the heat in her voice, “by all means, joli.” Without another thought towards propriety she buries her nose in the curls at the nape of Cullen's neck and breathes deeply of his scent.

“Dorian was right.” Cullen murmurs, and even in the enclosing darkness he knows Mirèio can hear the too-wide smile on his mouth.“You are a bear.” And then her laughter is shaking through his chest, her legs drawing his up until they are curled tight into one another. There is no space between them, and this calls up a sudden, hot prickling in his eyes.

Maker, oh Maker but he doesn't know what to do with all this light. 

“Go to sleep, joli. I will still be here when the sun rises. And I trust you shall be as well.”

“Yes,” he sighs, and there is no shame in him for the softness of the noise, “I know. I will.” 

The night terrors have been growing stronger. But, at least for this evening, he intends to be stronger still.

Stronger in her arms.

~ * ~


	8. Sithens in a net

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings are as follows: femdom, orgasm delay, orgasm denial, handjob.
> 
> This chapter was broken up differently on the Kinkmeme, but it's not here because I am lazy. Consequently, it's very long.
> 
> Sorry about that.

~ * ~

Wakefulness comes to him softly, slowly; sunlight touches the the thin paper of his eyelids with an unexpected warmth, and he curls his toes into the soft cotton beneath him, thoughts directionless and drifting in comfort. 

Mirèio's arm is still curled around him: a welcome weight anchoring him to the bed. 

Her bed.

_Congratulations, Cullen,_ Mia laughs in his head, _you just slept under the crest of a noblewoman's House. Laid yourself out under her banner. Quite literally. Whatever will our parents think?_

He huffs, buries his nose into the pillow beneath him; the colour behind his eyelids tells him it is not quite the hour of six, and fifteen years of rising with the cold blue of pre-dawn under his skin tells him he's overslept. Terribly.

Fortunately, he knows that both he, Josephine and Leliana worked diligently to ensure that all of Skyhold could enjoy at least one day of rest before hurling itself back into the fray. 

Today, he can spend his time as it pleases him to do so, and so can she.

The urge to turn himself over and bury his nose in the hollow of her throat is a pleasant thought he toys with idly, though he is perfectly content to simply listen to the steady, deep music of her breath against his neck. She still smells faintly of oranges, and beneath that is the sharpness of sweat and woodsmoke from the great fireplace in the hall. 

He shifts in little twitches, a ridiculous effort to avoid waking her just yet, and finds what he is hoping to: the long ribbon of her dark hair draped over her shoulder and his. Without a prick of guilt he gathers the strands up, mindful of the tangles sleep has woven into its usual arrow-straight length. 

It is just hair. But it is her hair. Mirèio's. Perhaps that is the important part. That he is here, in her bed, and if he so chooses he may touch her hair without reprimand. That he is free, perhaps even welcome to do so. 

Yes, perhaps that is the reason.

The coil wrapped round his fingers is dark, but shines blue beneath the waxing sunlight; it feels rougher than it did last night – most likely she uses oils in her bath. And then he must bite the inside of his cheek for want of a distraction from the picture his mind so readily supplies: slick, dark skin; hair plastered down past the curve of her ass; long, clever fingers and a red bow mouth. He imagines her breasts are small and high, her torso as powerful as her back. Marked with a scar, but no less magnificent. 

He wants to touch her thighs, feel them around his ears; he wants to hear the crackle in her chest, the rush of her breath as he parts her folds with his tongue, the slick velvet of her against his mouth.

_Maker's fucking breath._

He's seen her bare. Felt her heat against his own.

Her arm is still locked tight around his chest, bicep curled over his ribs; the steady rush of her breath against his neck sends a roving, prickling shudder down his spine, his feet and hands suddenly too hot under the heavy coverlet. 

Oh Maker, but he knows the taste of her mouth, the iron of her hands. The bite of her teeth, the curl of her tongue against his. The sound she makes when he opens his mouth for her. 

He curls up a little tighter, the ribbon of her hair still caught in his fist, and his movement calls her forward. She draws her arm tight, a little noise on her lips, and every inch of her chest is pressed to his back. 

He freezes. 

Each breath he takes lets him feel the small, hard points of her nipples through her sleep-shirt.

Heat pools sharply in his groin and he twitches, grits his teeth and breathes through his nose; he's half hard, and the laces of his breeches are unforgiving. 

And then he's on his back, staring up into Mirèio's face; the river of her hair falls around him in a sprawl of woodsmoke and bitter orange. 

“Dieu miséricordieux.” She laughs, eyes as bright as her smile. “Good morning, joli.” 

Ah, but Cullen is as lovely in the thin, rosy flush of early morning as he is under the honey glow of candle-light. Sleep clings to the soft lines of his face, turning his mouth gentle, pink. His eyes are wide, hazel-gold darkening under the hand of a growing flush. She can feel his desire pressed against the sharp point of her hip. 

“Good morning, Mirèio,” he replies, voice rough with the dust of sleep, with dawning need.

Poised above him, Cullen watches Mirèio observe him, his focus darting around the too-sharp splendour of her face; she's looking at him as if she has uncovered something wonderful, something that pleases her, and he does not know what to do with that. He had thought to feel small under her attention – she has a gaze as keen as a hawk: sharp and high and far watching – but he finds he feels nothing like smallness here.

Anticipation. Welcome. Acceptance. Lust. 

Care? 

He will not call it love. Not yet. 

He knows, already, it would hurt too much to find less than that in the muddle of the possibilities rising up between them. 

Cullen watches as Mirèio's hand creeps up – callused fingers leaving prickling skin in their wake – until she reaches the laces at the neck of his night shirt. He watches her nails catch on those same laces as she pulls them open.

_Say no,_ her gaze tells him, but there is nothing in him that would give her the satisfaction. 

No more waiting. 

No more endless, nervous circling. 

No more. 

The sound of cotton rasping through each eyelet lays unruly fire against Cullen's spine, and he shifts, jerks his hips up ever so slightly. Her mouth quirks up, and he stills until she's undone the laces in their entirety and tossed the string away. 

He opens his mouth, eager noise on his tongue, and she swallows it down, catching his bottom lip between her teeth. Their breath is sour, his hair too curly, hers too tangled; last night's sweat makes their skin bitter to the taste. 

The dawn is slowly brightening the room, rising up over the Frostbacks to pour sunshine in through the massive windows; all is honey and warmth, and the scent of a long gone fire, and beneath that the remains of cedar, and juniper. All is silent – pressed gently under the swiftly rising light. No noise drifts up from the courtyard, and there are no ravens tapping at the windows eagerly awaiting crumbs and responses.

“Maker, Cullen,” Mirèio hisses, tugging open the neck of the man's sleep shirt, “just _ask_.” 

Beneath her fingers are the marks she left: each is an angry flush of red against his skin, the imprint of her teeth only just fading away. She flicks a thumb across the one nearest his pulse point and Cullen makes a thick, happy little noise not too distant from a hum: a shiver of pleasure that closes his eyes and tugs at the corners of his mouth. The sight makes her clench, leaves her breathless, and she chuckles into his mouth, nipping gently at his tongue. 

“Such a fine little necklace, Cullen. Pity I never got to finish.”

_I have never known such beauty in a man._ Mirèio muses, wonder and delight bleeding together under the familiar coursing of her own wants. _And oh what a mouth. What a body._

“Whatever is stopping you, Mirèio?” Cullen breathes, voice husky and just a shade too needy, even to his own ears. “Do you need my permission?” Above him he can hear her mirth rolling out from her chest; with her above him he can watch the line of her shoulders flex, taste her breath, feel the red of her mouth brush against his skin. 

She makes such dark, thick noises: bristling and sharp and curling; sounds like fingers against his skin; noises that leaves marks; noises that make him _want_ so fiercely he cannot think.

“Of course.” Mirèio sighs, ducking down to press her nose to Cullen's bared throat. Shifting above him, she begins to slide her knee up. 

“Last night.” She hums, a little bur of regret tucked beneath her tongue. “I was not expecting that. Cullen if you need time, this stops now. I will not do this unless I have your absolute consent. Unless you tell me you are _sure_.”

Cullen finds he is more than a little finished with _last night_. 

“If I did not want to be here, I would not be here, Mirèio.” Words are not easy for him, they never have been. But he must tell her this, and perhaps if he tells her often enough she will believe it wholly. He tells her: “Why do you ask for what is yours already?” And then the words are gone, and there is nothing in him that seeks to call them back. His legs fall open with ease, eager to make space for the curl of her body above his.

He wants and she is willing.

He wants beneath her, and she does not think that desire shameful. 

She is not disgusted. 

So neither shall he be.

“Oh.” She bites down on the word, and her face is nothing but a white, too-bright grin: a burning, bristling hunger in a proud, knife-sharp gaze. “But I must have it from your mouth, Cullen. Yes or no, joli?”

“Yes.”

And then she is laughing, covering his mouth with hers, pushing her knee between his thighs until she meets the heat of his groin. Her hand finds Cullen's erection and she squeezes him through the cloth of his breeches, a damp heat beneath her fingers. He moans, whines into her mouth as she rocks them together, her knee grinding her palm into his cock with gentle, clenching pressure. 

“Mirèio,” he growls, snaps his teeth over her name as if it will leave if he does not. 

“Oui, joli?” She swallows his noises with a pleased chuckle, chasing each with the tip of her tongue. “Digues-me què és el que vol.” She punctuates, and her words are a slow, loose fingered stroke, patient beyond measure. Achingly slow. 

Cullen hisses, writhes against her, pushing his hardness into her palm, seeking a faster pace. She chuffs, trills to him, leaves a stinging trail of kisses along the line of his jaw. Despite the noises from his mouth, her fingers stay loose, palm flat and hot and steady against his length.

“Tell me what you want.”

“Skin,” he grits out, even under the steady friction of her hand, the bite of her teeth and the fire of her tongue. The laces of his breeches are rubbing against him sharply and each squeeze from Mirèio's hand sinks more heat into his belly, his balls tightening with each stroke. “I would prefer skin.”

“As you wish.”

She leans up – keeping her knee firmly, gently, against his groin – and hooks her fingers under Cullen's shirt. She seeks out his gaze, sees his hazel eyes clouded with lust, and finds the man beneath her a sight beyond measure: mouth red and slick, little necklace still standing out against the flush that has crept down to his chest, lovely curls in place of neat, blonde waves. 

“What a sight you are, joli. If only you could see...”

“Maker's fucking hand, Mirèio.” Cullen moans just as her knee jolts him sharply. “Move!”

“Oh no, Cullen. No. I will go as slowly as I please.” And this earns her a sharp, sudden whimper, his eyes squeezing shut as she traces her fingers hard against his length, nearly curling around the root of his cock. She cups him tightly, nails scratching up from his balls to the growing patch of moisture at his head. “We have time. And you will use that tongue of yours until there are no sounds left for you to make. Do you understand?”

“Yes.” He shivers, groans. “Mirèio.” 

He cannot stop calling out her name. Even to his own ears, the sound of her on his tongue is sweeter than any wine. Her body is so warm above his; the rushing of her breath curls around him, pushes sparks into his lungs. He breathes out, sharing her air, pinned under the weight of all that she is, all that he would have from her. 

Words. Words. So many words and there is no room left in him for things so frail as _words_. 

“Just – ”

“Just what, joli?”

His hips jolt up and his fingers tangle in the hem of of his night shirt, tugging against her hands. 

Laughter loud in the silence, the taller woman pulls at the offending article of clothing until Cullen is bare to the morning chill. Gooseflesh pebbles his skin, a spreading flush staining down past his collarbones.

Damn these Fereldens. Void take these tow-headed southerners with their milk and honey faces. Curse this man's gold lace lashes; this peach and honeysuckle skin; this red, bitten mouth softly stung.

She leans back down, covers his half-naked frame with hers, entirely too delighted to find a fine, pale dusting of hair. One hand trailing down his chest, she rocks them together again, fingers skittering across to find one of his charmingly dusky nipples. Her nail scrapes over and Cullen jolts against her, hissing. She pinches, rolling the pebbled skin between her thumb and forefinger.

“Oh,” Cullen gasps, arching into her touch, “please.” Her nail flicks out, pressing none too gently, before her mouth comes down, trailing up his ribs until her lips close over the other. His breath catches in his throat at the suggestion of her teeth, and then he is pleading again. 

Mirèio bites ever so softly, slowly, and the cool of her breath against the reddened skin pulls a scraped thin noise from between his lips. 

“Sensitive there are we, Cullen?”

“Obviously,” he laughs, madly sucking air through his teeth. That is also lyrium's fault: the slow deadening of his body, of his ability to feel any sort of pain, or pleasure. He'd gotten his skin back less than two months after his last draught, his tongue took much longer than that. But she does not need to know that. Not right now.

Her hands move down as she brings him back her mouth, sharp nails tracing down over the clenching muscles in his abdomen until they are untying the laces of the breeches, tugging sharply.

“Mirèio,” he pleads, “Mirèio.” And then she is pushing the fabric down roughly, pulling away to yank his breeches off. Unbidden, he lifts his hips and she makes a strangled noise, need bright in her mouth. The breeches are stubborn and she must move down the bed. Grabbing the cuffs at his ankles, Mirèio tugs so roughly Cullen slides with his pants, a sharp, singular note of laughter in his throat.

And then he is bare, utterly. 

Mirèio curls her fingers into her fists and glides back up the bed, head low and mouth pulled up by a wicked, curling desire. 

“Look at me, Cullen,” she summons. 

He does, eyes burnished gold-coin bright; holds himself as still as a hart under the gaze of a wolf. 

She uncurls her fingers, lays them against the soft skin just above his knees and begins to slide her hands up, fingers dragging sharply. More noises, hot and bitten red, and she wants to leave her mark here too: on the trembling softness of his thighs. 

She holds his gaze, bent between the splay of his legs, and the picture she presents snatches all the breath from Cullen's lungs. Leaves him dizzy. Strung between hunger and burning need. He watches her, watches her ease her way back up, and the fabric of her nightshirt brushes against his hardness – the sudden friction singing through him, nerves alight and his breath too hot in his mouth.

Mirèio grins, teeth flashing white against her red, sickle-curve lips, and prowls back up until she can feel the heat of his cock against her hip.

“My name has never sounded so strange, nor so sweet, Cullen, as in your mouth,” Mirèio speaks, closing her fingers around the root of his cock. The man beneath her groans sharply, head snapping back against the pillows. His breathing turns to heavy, needle fine panting, and he pushes himself into her hand. She cups him firmly, running her fingers up the length experimentally, slow enough to drag a breathy moan from his throat. “I do so enjoy hearing it.” 

“Maker.” Cullen nearly wails as the tip of Mirèio's nail presses into the slit at the head of his cock. She squeezes gently, thumb rubbing sharply over the slit again. “Maker.” 

“Not here,” the mage breathes, drawing back Cullen's foreskin to circle the rough pad of her thumb around the head, pre-come slick against her skin, “just you and I.”

“Mirèio.”

“Ah,” she laughs, low and thick in the pit of her chest, “such sweet music, joli. I intend to hear every note.” She punctuates with a stroke of her fingers from root to tip, easing her other hand beneath Cullen ass to heft him onto her thighs. “Every single note.”

Oh but her face is so beautiful like this: perfectly in control, flushed and too-pleased, grey eyes sure and dark as the earth in her bones. 

“Bring your legs up,” she croons. 

Cullen bites his lip between his teeth, hard; hard enough to feel a sting of pain.

“Heels against my back,” she murmurs, pressing her command between his lips to draw her tongue over the sting.

Cullen does as he is bid, and he knows she can see the drunken, too-wide smile stinging his cheeks. He can feel the clench and shift of the muscles in her back as her hand drags up his cock again. He's leaking, smearing enough fluid between them to turn the sharp rasping into a pleasurable slick. 

She picks up her pace, her fingers tightening and easing with each stroke, and he feels a rush of prickling heat pooling between his legs, his toes curling. He gasps, rocking into her touch, pushing himself into her hand in a rhythm he'd nearly forgotten. He needs her to go faster, needs her to do something that isn't a maddening, burning slide. 

He wants so much more than her hands. 

His hips buck, and she brings her free hand around until she's got her fingers digging into the sharp line of his hipbone. 

Cullen sucks in a trembling breath, air cold against his teeth.

“Be still. I am not finished with you yet, joli,” Mirèio punctuates with a sharp pinch to the sensitive skin between where Cullen's ass meets the back of his thighs. 

“Oh,” falls from his mouth, pulled out by her teeth as a long, breathless groan. Her fingers are insistent, palm pressed flat and strong against the curve of his backside. 

“Inquisitor?”

Mirèio freezes.

“Andraste's flaming fucking tits,” falls off her tongue, and she curves over the man beneath her until their foreheads are touching and his legs must grip her tight, heels digging sharply into her back to keep the slick slide of her hand on his cock.

Cullen finds his own mouth falling open, a reprimand hiding behind his teeth.

“I do not care. Fucking Maker's balls,” she curses with a snarl, “I don't fucking care. I will not.”

“Inquisitor Trevelyan? Your Worship?”

“No.” Cullen pleads with her, heat staining down to his chest; she's got him nearly bent double, but he's still achingly hard in her hand. He squirms beneath her: a hot, insistent reminder. “No. No. Don't you dare. No, Mirèio.” 

The knocking starts up, loud and strident. 

He hears her murmur _forgive me, joli_ , and Cullen nearly sobs when her hand falls away. Everything is overloud: the sound of her whisper and the noise of her creeping away across the sheets sets his skin alight, turning all into a mess of jangling anger and want. 

Watching her clamber away with a miserable apology on her mouth is agony. 

He's hard, leaking, red all over and so hot he can hardly breathe, and she's half way across her cold, echoing quarters before he remembers he's naked.

Naked and splay legged in the Inquisitor's bed. 

He gropes blindly for the sheet, throws a pillow over his face and breathes into the orange and vetiver scented cotton. The fabric drags against his erection and he whimpers, outrage nearly choking. 

_I will not scream. I will not._

“Yes?” Her voice strikes out like a lash, a fierce crack that puts teeth against the nape of his neck, even from across the room. 

Mirèio is angry. Beyond angry. Furious. If he wasn't reeling, body stinging and lungs clenched too-tight, he'd laugh. If he wasn't currently rubbing himself over her sheets, open mouth pressed hot and firm into the cotton of her pillow, he'd be howling. 

The Inquisitor is often angry, has no qualms sharing her displeasure when it has been justly earned. He rather enjoys watching her take someone apart with her particular manner of savage efficiency. Yet, fascinatingly enough, he's beginning to see the difference: the thick, dark line between the Inquisitor, and _Mirèio_. And Mirèio, well, Mirèio is rarely so furious with someone that she feels the need to hunt for blood, tongue held like a lash between her teeth. 

Here, right now, he can hear the difference as plain as day. The Inquisitor is not angry. Mirèio is. Mirèio who is the daughter of a Teryn, Mirèio who is the first born, most beloved heir of two great Houses; Mirèio who is _highborn_ , and accustomed to having whatever she desires whenever it pleases her to have it.

_Andraste defend the fool on the other side of the door_ , Cullen laughs to himself, _I nearly feel sorry for them. Poor soul._

“Inquisitor Trevelyan?” a firm, even-handed voice speaks. If there is surprise at the harsh retort found behind the door, the owner of that voice is most adept at hiding it.

“Grand Enchanter.” 

He hears her words distantly, and the chill in Mirèio's voice is brittle even to his ears.

_The Grand Enchanter? By the stones of the Black City, what could Fiona want on the morning after the Wild Night? What could be so pressing as to intrude on my..._ He catches himself, catches his thought. _My what? What exactly, is she? Do I dare presume?_

Mirèio's conversation calls him back, and he hears: “Of course I'll be leaving detailed lesson plans for the apprentices, if that is what you desire of me. I will be gone from the fortress for at least three weeks, perhaps a month, and I would trust you to _trust_ me to ensure your students continue in their studies.”

_What? Gone from the fortress three weeks? Why? We did not speak of this at the last council._

“I trust you with my life, Your Worship.” Fiona replies, her voice a gentle rebuke against the Inquisitor's wintery tongue. “What the Inquisition has done for the cause of all mages across Thedas has been beyond measure. But – ”

“I would prefer Mirèio, Grand Enchanter, if it is all the same to you. I am literally standing before you in aught but my sleep shirt, and, as such, I think we dispensed with the formalities of rank quite some time ago.”

Fiona laughs, and Cullen wonders if it is unkind of him to wish her a short trip down a very long flight of stairs. Or perhaps an hour in the stocks for having the audacity to knock on the Inquisitor's door before the hour of six. 

“In that case, shall we meet after you break your fast, Mirèio? I should like to get your opinion on the next month's curriculum.”

“I am not a circle trained mage, Fiona,” Mirèio offers to the elvhen woman in return, her voice as flat as a rock skipped across a still lake. “I haven't the first idea as to what constitutes a young mage's education. The only training I ever received that might be considered formal was at the hands of Rivaini seers and hedge mages. I am wholly unsure I should be teaching _anything_ other than how to grow fruits and vegetables.” 

_Curriculum? We've been interrupted over curriculum?_ Cullen groans, feeling himself soften with every passing minute. 

“What was that?”

Now it is his turn to freeze. 

“Satinalia is a time of personal luxury, Fiona. I'm sure you understand.” If her tongue was a bitter lathe before, it is a skinning knife now: thin, cruel and cutting.

_Personal luxury?_ Cullen chokes a little, laughing to himself. _Is that what I am? A luxury? How novel._ The thought does strange things to him, an odd, sweet-as-honey heat tangling up in his chest.

“Ah,” Fiona replies with a chuckle, “I'll leave you to it then, your Worship. Though, I do believe that your sénéchal was looking for you as well. I do not think Sister Nightingale will accept luxury for the reason you will not open your door. If I see her, I will try to dissuade her of her desire to interrupt. Think of it as a courtesy, from one woman to another.”

“Thank you, Fiona. Your discretion is most appreciated.”

At the sound of footsteps on the stone, Cullen breathes out sharply, propping himself up on his elbows to find Mirèio in the distance. Only she does not make to return, instead flying out the door with a name on her lips.

He only narrowly manages to avoid calling after her retreating form.

“Yhera!” Mirèio bellows, anger sitting heavily on her chest. 

There is a banging, followed by a resonant crash from somewhere down the hall, and Cullen can hear a young, high voice calling out.

“Inquisitor?”

And then the slapping of bare feet against stone.

“Forgive me, Yhera, I know I promised you your bed from sun up to sun down, and you are welcome to go back to it, and who ever is in it, as soon as this is done – but I must ask you to take a message to whichever of Commander Rutherford's captains is stationed at the end of the hall.”

“I believe that would be Ser Rylen,” the girl replies with a murmur, until she thinks better of it, “of course! Inquisitor it is no trouble, at all. I am happy to be of service.”

“Yhera,” Mirèio all but snarls, “please tell Captain Rylen that no one is to come through this hall with the intention of knocking on my door for at least two more hours. I do not care if the entire eastern half of the fortress is burning down around my ears. Not one soul in this hall. Not one.”

“Yes, your Worship.”

“Thank you, Yhera.”

And then there is only the sound of footsteps skittering down the hall and the slamming of a very heavy door by a very angry woman.

“Maker's balls,” Mirèio grits out, forehead pressed to the door, “can I – can we – not have a moment? Just one?” In the distance she can hear Cullen chuckle, though the noise is a little too tightly wound. 

She finds her mouth has gone crooked, smile wide enough to sting. “I suppose it does not matter though,” she continues, “you are still in my bed, after all.”

“Yes,” she hears, “I am.” 

The laughter in her throat cracks out like a bolt driven home, striking against the stones and rafters above her head. All is rough and harsh in her, a mess of desire and want and some savage, tight fisted need to bar to the door and keep Cullen here until he forgets all that is still crowding between them; all that they hurled at each other last night. Until he only remembers the weight of her hands on his frame, the press of her fingers, her teeth.

_Not yet,_ she reminds herself.

_Not just yet._

She prowls back to the bed, face thunderous and body coiled tight with something fierce, something that tumbles awkwardly against her outrage. 

Cullen is still propped up on his elbows, and under her gaze he feels himself stiffen. “Mirèio?” he ventures, watching her with a quiet he does not feel. There is an odd light in her steel-bright eyes.

“My apologies,” Mirèio breathes, sliding back onto the bed on her knees, “that will not happen again.” 

Cullen has covered himself with the sheet, and she bunches up great handfuls to tug it down in one swift jerk. 

She almost does. 

“Mirèio,” Cullen speaks, and this time her name is a warning, a reprimand, “I do not want you to be careful. Not right now.”

Her fingers tighten in the sheets, a dark, tinkling chuckle on her lips. 

“If you ask me again, I will not be pleased.”

“Truly?” She laughs, a blistering heat in the back of her throat.

“Yes.”

The sheet falls away with ease – a soft, bitten off noise in Cullen's mouth.

And oh, but this man is a glory; a wonder; the very image of _wanting_. His cock is half hard against his thigh, not overly long but pleasingly thick, and his skin is a tapestry of colours, the marks round his neck and throat calling up a heady, smirking satisfaction. They are her marks, and each time she touches one Cullen makes the finest, prettiest noises she's ever heard: heat on heat in the red of his mouth. 

With all haste, Mirèio pads up the bed until she is trailing her hands over Cullen's body. The first brush of her fingers against his skin seems to loosen something in him and he uncurls again, reaching out to drag her closer. Their lips meet again, teeth jarring sharply in the sudden rush. Mirèio licks in deep, tilting Cullen's head back until he's clinging to her shoulders, until he's sucking her air into his mouth and his length is a red as the rest of him. 

Cullen bites back, opens wide. Heedless. 

_I have waited. I have waited and waited and waited. Maker knows I have waited long enough._

Each slide of her tongue against his is punctuated by their teeth, by the shifting of her shoulders beneath his hands, by the little noises lying scattered between them. 

And then she is curling away to settle herself behind him.

“Mirèio?” Cullen groans, rolling his head back onto her shoulder in the hopes of catching her intent.

“Cullen,” she returns with a sigh, giving him her regret with a kiss hard enough to make him taste her magic on his tongue, “surely you realize we simply do not have the time now.”

“I beg your pardon?” And his voice is a snarl, a plea. “Two hours, you asked for – ” 

“Listen to me, joli,” she interrupts. “You will pay attention now.”

Cullen stills.

“You and I, we are both from different worlds.” Mirèio sighs, gathering up the great, steady river of her patience. Cullen has never done this before. She is sure of that. He may have fucked others, or been fucked in turn, but she greatly doubts it was in such a manner as their current situation suggests. Nor in the manner she desires. “And that is no small thing. Neither is it a terrible thing. It simply is.”

Pressed to her chest, tangled in her arms, Cullen laughs, dread and desire jostling against one another under the hand of an unruly anticipation. “Aye. I'll not deny that.”

“People like us, who want the things we want from each other, we need to tell the other what it is we want. If we do not, we may hurt each other.”

At that, Cullen snorts, struggles with his impatience; the heat of her laid against his back is delirious, and there is the distinct need in him to rub himself against her, call her back to the task at hand. “I would prefer to believe otherwise.”

_Ah,_ Mirèio ponders, not wholly without a little thimble of bitterness in the back of her throat, _but the world does not always permit the likes of us such a choice._

“Regardless, we will do this by inches, joli,” Mirèio murmurs thickly, lips ghosting against his skin and bitterness held firm behind her teeth. “And if I do or say anything that is not to your liking, you must tell me immediately.” 

Tucking his head back, nose pressed into the salt-heavy sweep of Mirèio's neck, Cullen nods; breathes deep and murmurs: “As you wish.”

Mirèio laughs, shakes her head, squeezes her eyes shut and lets the chill touch her teeth.

“No, joli, always it will be as you desire. I may command, but it is your needs I serve first. So,” she marshals, wraps herself in certainty and the dark, rolling flex of her voice in the pit of her chest, “what are your thoughts on gentle restraint? I have no leather or silk at the moment, but my legs will serve, if you are willing.” 

“What?” Cullen speaks, breath faint on his tongue. 

“By your leave and only by your leave, joli,” Mirèio replies, toes brushing against the soles of his feet. “I do not provide this,” she squeezes him between her legs, her thighs, and oh what a noise that earns her, “unless I am certain it is wanted.”

For a moment the world stops, jolts to a halt as sharply as the breath in his chest. 

The realization strikes him hard, hard as a ballista bolt through the sternum: no one has ever asked him before. Oh, needs were exchanged, needs met. But a specific thought towards his pleasure, his preferences? 

Never.

“Cullen?” Mirèio calls. “Say no and this ends now. Tell me now. Right now, Cullen.” There is panic bright on her tongue, a swiftly climbing alarm that twists her skin tight against her bones. She does not play in the dark, does not treat her lovers' bodies like blank canvas unless she has been asked to do so. 

This ends now.

She moves ever so slightly, gently uncurling herself from Cullen's back. That is, at least, what she attempts to do.

“Don't,” Cullen hisses, “don't you dare.”

Mirèio freezes, pinned between caution and uncertainty. “Joli – ”

“I told you I did not want you to be careful. I was not lying.” The words slip off his tongue with ease, though he means to give them to her with all the force he can manage. “I have never asked this of anyone. I have wanted this for many, many years, and found no one I could _trust_ to have it from.”

She curls back slowly, achingly slowly, fingers cautious and throat locked up tight. A vice round her fine neck. “I do not enjoy moving through the dark, Cullen.” 

“I will tell you,” he stumbles, struggling to call back the heat in his voice, in his body, “I swear I will tell you.” And he is entirely unsure what he is promising to tell her, only that he is certain to the white of his bones that he will. 

“You have been waiting. I have been waiting. I am utterly finished with waiting. I am so _tired_ of waiting. I want this,” he punctuates, rocking back into her solid torso, “and I am done pretending otherwise.” 

That pulls a grunt from the woman behind him, a noise of surprise caught between her teeth, and it jolts her into action. Brings her back her voice.

“No. This is not a – ”

“Yes.” He snarls, squirming against her, scrabbling for her arms. “You swore all I need do was ask. Well I am asking now. That was not fear, that was surprise, Mirèio.” His voice flexes, turns into the burr of a sword drawing from its scabbard. “No one in the Circles ever asked. A rough hand, a willing mouth. Quick. Ugly. A passing attempt at satisfaction. I have never been _asked_ and now, now I am. So for the love of the Maker put your legs around me, and fucking touch me or so help me – ” 

Without another word Mirèio draws forward, wraps her arms round Cullen's chest and locks her feet back against his ankles. Eases his legs as far apart as a passing nod at comfort will allow. She does this so slowly, so gently, the contact will break if Cullen moves even a hair's breadth away. 

He doesn't move away, doesn't jolt; he gives the woman above him a stream of fervent, whisper fine words that might be nothing more than a long, long string of _yes_.

And he is, beneath her, still as a hart in the company of a wolf; red sounds falling from the curl of his mouth.

Her chest pressed to his back, she pushes him forward until he is shuddering against her, breath coursing from his mouth in great, heated gouts.

“Consent is yours to give. Yours to take away. I need to know you understand that, Cullen.” She'd learned her lesson long ago: never take a lover who isn't sure of what they want. Never put your hands over someone who does not know if they want those same hands there. That is dangerous beyond measure. Cruel.

She stopped being unkind nearly a decade ago, and nothing will see her returned to that state. Nothing. 

She commands: “I need you to be clear, joli.” No give in her voice, but iron and strength. “I must know you are sure. It is not safe if you are not sure.” 

With her weight above him, her arms round his torso, Cullen feels an odd security warring with his mounting frustration, frustration that stains him red and sews a plea fast to his tongue. “I do. I do understand.” 

She will not move. Will not be moved. 

“Please, Mirèio,” he grits out, that same frustration crawling down to clench in his guts like a fist, “I want this. I know I do. Whatever you will give.” 

“Are you certain?”

“Yes!” Cullen wails. “Yes. Yes. For the last time, yes.”

He's panting, trying to curl in deeper, folding down until there is a stinging burn in the joints of his hips. “Move!” He curses. “Put your hands on me. Andraste's mercy, please. I would have more than your hands.”

This seems to cut clean through the stone she's wrapped herself in and she softens around him, shoulders curling and arms flexing gently, rhythmically.

“I believe I told you not a moment ago, joli: we do not have time for anything more.” Beneath her she can hear Cullen groan, denial on his lips like a stone he intends to hurl through the glass of her refusal. 

“Do you truly think two hours is enough to satisfy either one of us?” Mirèio questions, words low and dark as earth: rich and resonant. She can feel every minute twitch of his body, every lance of pleasure, every shiver. Every little noise he cannot close his teeth over. 

“No.” Cullen laughs, breathless and washed in wonder. His mouth is wide, his eyes are stinging, and there is a great, fiercely burning joy in his chest. 

_The stone relented, and she did so at my behest._

Knowing herself, knowing the root of her actions, was a hard thing to learn; but she is more than proficient in that now. And so she knows he needs this more than she does. And so she will be careful beyond measure, and give him a little. Just enough to show him what waits for them on a better day.

“Good,” she murmurs, nipping at his earlobe, “because I intend to fuck you properly. Thoroughly.” 

Oh.

_Oh._

Under the fire of Mirèio's words all the air drives out of his lungs and Cullen nearly sags to the bed despite the stinging pressure in the joints of his hips. Her lips are still at his ear, her words sliding into him in the shape of that oh so familiar sword: the one made of road-dust and dragon-blood. His hands remain firm over her vice-like forearms, and he threads their fingers together. 

The iron of her grip is the sweetest he's ever known.

“I intend to fuck you until you cannot remember any other hands but mine. Until you are begging for release.” Mirèio whispers, hands still wrapped around Cullen's heaving chest, enjoying the crush of his fingers pressing hard against her own. “I will make you a wreck of desire, of wanting. I will have that mouth of yours truly learn to speak your needs. And you will scream them for me, joli, I promise,” she hisses, raking one hand down until she's taken hold of him again. 

The noise that tears out of his throat is a red wail, and his chin hits his chest sharply, his legs jerking in Mirèio's unshakeable grip. 

Rocking him forward, arms still wrapped round his waist, she growls, teeth to the shell of his ear. “Do you doubt me?”

“Never,” Cullen breathes. 

“Good.”

“Say that again,” leaves his lips, words dripping off his tongue like the fluid once more leaking from his cock, “please.”

“Ah,” Mirèio drawls, mouth once more drifting back to the man's flushed throat, “but which part?” Smiling wide, she waits, feels Cullen grunt, pushing himself into the tight circle of her fingers. It is a little thing for her to bar his movements. He writhes, a whimper in his throat. “That I will fuck you, joli? Is that what you'd like to hear again?”

“Yes,” he moans, “yes.” 

That word. That word on her lips.

Oh.

That is what he wants.

“Good. Because I am going to have you Cullen. Take you.” That earns her a thick, scraped-raw whine; the man in her arms bends at the waist as far as the iron of her grip will allow, rutting into her hand. “And here I thought I would have to convince you,” Mirèio smirks, lips writing her words against his skin. “It would appear you and I want in equal measure. Do you want only fingers, or something more?” 

“More. That is what I want.” Cullen breathes. “More.” 

For so long, that is all he has wanted. But there was nothing in him that could speak as much. Not to her face. 

Before her, not to anyone's face. 

“For how long, joli?” Mirèio speaks, pressing an open mouthed kiss to the jumping pulse in Cullen's throat, salt bitter on her tongue. “How long have you wanted this? How long have you thought of me bending you over the war table?”

“What?” Cullen grunts, voice flexing hoarse. “How did you?”

“Sometimes you wear your desires so plainly it drives me mad. Did you think I could not feel your reaction?” Mirèio growls, sliding one hand away to pinch the tender flesh of Cullen's inner thigh. 

He jolts, whimpers again. 

Even through the haze, the heat, he can feel the slick of his fluid leaking down, sliding between the clench of Mirèio's fingers. His length is so hard it is an ache strong enough to make him suck air in through his teeth. A mad, heady rush he cannot dispel. Does not want to. 

“It was so _hard_ to gentle myself in your company.” Mirèio snaps, teeth at the shell of his ear. “I wanted and your cheeks were so red, and it would have cost me nothing to simply grab you round the waist and push you down.”

Cullen cannot think; her voice is thunder in his ears. He drags in burning lungfuls of air, and then her fingers are loosening just enough to trace the thick vein on the underside of his cock before gathering up the fluid leaking over the fine sheets. She waits, slick fingers clenching softly, maddeningly, before settling back tight against the root.

He bites his tongue, the soft inside of his mouth.

“How long have you wanted this, Cullen?” Mirèio speaks, and it is built of a hard, forceful command.

He shakes his head, squeezes his eyes shut.

“Tell me.”

“I can't remember,” falls off his tongue with a gasp, “I can't. Weeks before you closed the Breach, that day in the snow. The first time you came to training yard, when you tossed one of my senior templars to the dirt like he was nothing. I watched you lay your sword against his neck and smile, and I could not think. When you picked up Josephine, hugged her so tightly she kicked her feet up from the floor. You held her fast. She looked so happy to have that from you, and I wanted. I wanted that too. No one has ever, ever given me that. When you laughed and said you'd never been a good mage. That you were not to be commanded. When you brought that farmer's prized druffalo back with a smile on your face, so happy to help. When you asked me if I'd given you leave to touch me, with that wicked grin on your face, Mirèio please – ”

“Touch yourself,” Mirèio trills, dragging her nose down to the sweat-slick hollow of Cullen's throat. Her own shirt is sticking fast to her back, but she would not uncurl herself for anything. Not right now. Not with him beneath, too hot and too insistent and too pulled open for anything other than absolute honesty. 

He needs this. And so does she.

“What?” Cullen moans, hands bunching up great fistfuls of cotton, seeking blindly for Mirèio's knees. “I – ” 

“This is your first lesson in what is to come,” she laughs, unwinding her free hand from around his waist to curl her fingers under his chin. He sags a little, and she moves quickly. 

“Show me that soldier's endurance I've heard so much about.”

He breathes, he breathes and everything is a slick curl of heat: his skin, his tongue, his cock, his thighs. Her tongue, her skin, her voice, her teeth.

“If this is a discomfort to you, Cullen you must – ”

“No. No, Mirèio.” Cullen huffs, mouth crooked and head lolling back. “Keep talking, Void take you.”

“Take yourself in hand, joli,” she purrs, pressing a kiss just behind his ear, “and bring yourself to climax.”

He does as he is commanded. 

His hand closes around his leaking cock, breath over-loud in his ears, and he strokes down sharply until he meets the ring of her fingers pressed flush to the very root. The impact jolts him deeply, pain mixing with pleasure in a searing, heady burn. His guts clench sharply and he nearly howls, but the noise comes out a long, red-edged groan.

“I did not say how quickly you would get there, Cullen.”

He makes some unintelligible response, breathing in sharp, quick gasps.

“One hundred strokes, joli. Not before. Not after. One hundred.”

Cullen chokes on a moan, thick and wet in the heat of his mouth. “I can't,” he breathes, “I cannot – Mirèio.”

“Of course you can, my commander.” That earns her a deep, raking shudder; a thin, sweet-slick moan. “Besides,” Mirèio calls to him, chuckling into the sweat-damp flush on his temple, “I think you will find trying is beyond pleasurable.”

He strokes again, meets the ring of her fingers, and she counts. Her voice is rough and black-earth rich; the arm round his waist props him up, even under the hot, mindless slide of his hand. 

His fingers curl around the head, his hand a mirror to hers, his thumb nail pressing sharply into the slit, and over his shoulder he hears her sigh, delight burning in her mouth.

She's watching. She's watching his hands, and now he can feel the heat between her legs at the small of his back, her teeth at his ear, her arms firm but trembling oh so softly. 

The need that rips through his belly is unbearable, and her knowing chuckle sinks it in deeper.

“Move, Cullen,” Mirèio trills with a sigh, teeth nipping over the point of one sharp collarbone, “you are not finished yet.”

He strokes back, pushes against her fingers, knees shaking and legs twitching up in an attempt to curl deeper into her hot frame. 

That familiar, tightening heat pools in between his legs before he reaches eighty five and he hisses, whimpers. Close, so close. Too soon. And then Mirèio has her teeth laid against his shoulder, fingers digging into the groove at his hips just enough to disrupt his rhythm. The coil of his release falls away and he grits his teeth, red spots dancing beneath his eyelids. 

“Eighty four,” she hums, voice lilting and gravel-rough. “Keep going.” 

He does, he does until the tightening returns, and then she chases it away. Again and again. Over and over until he cannot keep his hand on his cock, until he's nearly pushed into the mattress, forehead less than a hand's span from the cotton sheets. And Mirèio is rutting with him, silent and strong at his back, the ring of her fingers tightening and easing in a pattern he cannot discern. Has no sense to understand. 

“Sixty one,” Cullen hears, and he gnashes his teeth, growls and snaps in her arms, blind and aware of nothing but the fire of her watching, of her teeth on the skin of his shoulder. 

His hand falls away, slips, and she draws it back with such ease. 

He meets the ring of her fingers again. Knows nothing but heat, heat and the force of her breath on his neck, over his shoulder. Knows nothing but her teeth and the stinging bites round his neck.

“You are magnificent, Cullen,” Mirèio speaks, whispers, calls, “but you can go farther still. I know you can, joli.”

She is so hot against his back, and his fingers slip again.

There is the salt of his own sweat stinging in his eyes, and he is sobbing, pleading, whimpering please please, please, oh maker. Please. His fingers slide and he squirms, pushes; red, red, so red and hot and how. How could he have waited so long?

Oh Maker.

Oh Holy, merciful Maker, please.

“Mirèio!” Cullen wails, “please, I – I please. I beg of you please.”

“Sing for me, joli,” she speaks, breathes, fire on her tongue. 

“Mirèio, please!” and he is bucking up just as her fingers release, as she strokes hard and firm up his length with a hot, slick twist. Just as she brings her fingers back down to the root and slides again, a little flick of her wrist edging him over, over and – her laughter on her tongue, her breath on his skin. 

_Maker._

His release tears through him – pulls a hoarse cry from his lips on red, gleaming hooks – seed spilling over her hand and his, between his thighs and onto her sheets.

Mirèio's rumble of pleasure sifts through Cullen's chest as she pumps him through the last, too-raw notes of his climax. She leans back, drags him with her, and his head lolls onto her shoulder. There is moisture just at the edges of his vision; he must squeeze his eyes shut tight to chase it away. His tongue feels thick and useless in his mouth, and there is an oblivion in his body he hasn't felt in years. Possibly, deliciously, what this feels like shares more in common with _never_.

“I have never.” He croaks, breathing hard against her taller frame. 

“Never?” Mirèio smiles. “Surely not.”

Cullen makes a thick, happy little noise. “Nearly,” he chuckles.

“And to think, I thought perhaps you were more sheltered in your own knowledge.” Mirèio chuckles, easing them up and drawing Cullen's legs back together, though the motion makes him grunt against her neck. 

“No,” Cullen replies, hip joints stinging fiercely, pleasantly; the burn is welcome, relished even. “I am not unaware of what I want, Mirèio. Just unsure if I – if I had any right to want it.”

Wiping her hand off on the sheet, Mirèio gathers up Cullen's boneless frame and eases them both down flat against the pallet. Well away from the wet mess they've just made. Slow enough for him to refuse. “Of course you do, joli. It is yours to want, and to refuse, as you see fit.”

He makes no noise save for a long sigh deep within the pit of his chest, feet searching out Mirèio's to curl their legs back together. She settles atop him, the sprawl of her body pressing a welcome weight over his frame, one hand running in lazy, gentle strokes along his flank, up over his ribs, down to the point of his hipbone. 

So few have ever made more than a passing effort at affection after release. He's so rarely given it, hardly ever received it. There was never any time. Nor reason. 

And then he realizes – though his head is stuffed too full of too many things – only one of them has found release.

“Can I not, do we not have time?” Cullen questions, rolling over to bury his nose in the sweep of Mirèio's throat. Her hands readjust with ease, but she remains silent. “Do you not want the same from me?”

“Beyond measure, joli,” Mirèio replies with a gentle smile, the pad of her thumb drawing patterns against the small of Cullen's back, “but we are fast running out of time, and I am well satisfied. There will be other opportunities.” 

“I think, perhaps, I might hate the Grand Enchanter,” he mutters, lips sliding over the steady beat of Mirèio's pulse. Beneath his tongue her skin is salt and the particular tang of her magic, the faintest trace of orange and woodsmoke. “I want to know, I want to touch you. If she had not interrupted – ”

“Then Leliana would have,” Mirèio chuckles, tugging at Cullen's broad shoulders to tuck the man more firmly against her chest, “and then you truly would have died of embarrassment. In my bed no less. Or perhaps Josie would have come bustling in, as she has before.”

At this Cullen groans, wrinkling his nose. “You should know: I think our lady Ambassador suspects.”

“Please,” Mirèio replies with a snort, “she knows, not suspects. There is no suspecting with mi princesa. The same may be said of Leliana.”

At Mirèio's gentle admonishment, Cullen frowns and says: “I was hoping otherwise.”

“Oh?” The taller woman smiles, teeth sharp against her red mouth. “Why is that?”

“It is no one's concern but ours, Mirèio. I would prefer it remain thus.” He is a private man, his life and its inner workings rest with him and him alone. Few know aught but his name, and those that know more may be counted on one hand. He has never had a reason to share, never desired to do so. And he does not know how to tell the tall, magnificent woman stretched out beside him all of this _nonsense_ without it sounding as if he is still ashamed. 

Besides, the daughter of a Teryn has no need to walk hand in hand with her lowborn lover. The Inquisitor, even less so.

“Ah.” She makes a noise that is not quite a concession and drags her fingers against the curve of Cullen's backside, nails trailing slowly down; he shivers, tucks himself in closer. “I will endeavour to remember that, joli.”

“Is – is that not what you want?” Surprise cuts through him, slides a strange, bubbling heat into his innards; Mirèio's skin is hot, sweat-slick and bitter; he is the same, though she has decorated him with her teeth and her nails and her hands. It is. He has no words. He wants to curl in deeper, push further. Have her above him again, her thighs clamped over the points of his hips, or around his ears.

“Oh joli,” Mirèio murmurs, “I think you and I should speak in a little while. I am not a quiet woman, remember. I have never been one to hide my lovers away. But,” she cautions, “I understand your desire to have this between us and us alone. I am more than happy to respect that wish.”

“Never?”

“Never,” Mirèio offers up with a crooked little grin, burying her nose in the wild curls of Cullen's hair, “I am first-born. Heir. Once I truly believed my position was unassailable, I stood taller than ever before. Whether it was in Rivain, Antiva or Ostwick, I had whoever I pleased. I had them because they desired me, as I desired them. I made no attempt to be subtle about it. I did not need to.” 

Cullen stiffens, a cold stone in his throat.

“Cullen,” she calls, fingers curling up to brush under his chin in gentle, soothing motions, thumbs wicking lightly over the little necklace round his throat, “whatever this is between you and I, it is not something so base as conquest. Not a quick fuck behind my family's little chapel in the northeastern quarter of the grounds.”

“You speak as if that was a very particular memory, Mirèio,” Cullen laughs, something sharp easing out of his lungs. He does not know what this is between them, but he does not, above all else, wish to think of this as something easily discarded. That would hurt. Very much. 

“It was. The lass was a few years older than myself, but I made up for any of my inadequacies with a great heap of reckless enthusiasm.” Her words are warm, made thick by the dust of a pleasant, long gone moment.

And then he is laughing, laughing into her neck, tucking his nose into the sticky hollow of her throat. So generous. So open. So willing to share: hands and joys and moments. Little things doled out like coins, like gems, and he is so _eager_ to see how vast her riches are.

He should try also.

Soon. 

“I think I would enjoy that reckless enthusiasm greatly, Mirèio.”

At this Mirèio hums, and presses a kiss to the curls beneath her lips. “I will give you what you ask for, joli, but not without words from your mouth. If you wish for this to happen again and you do not tell me what you want, you will get nothing. That is how it must be. Always.”

Cullen stills, glances up into the sprawl of her gaze and finds only steel and surety laid against piercing grey. Her face is a wealth of strange things: pleasure, certainty, promise, the gentlest touch of pride. 

With a rough, cut-up frown on his face, he murmurs: “And why is that?”

“We all have limits. Things or touches or actions that make us uncomfortable, or that we do not want.” Mirèio offers the words back to him with a sigh, with an open hand. “For myself, I do not enjoy having my hair pulled, touched or wrapped around a hand unless I am asked first. My hair is an intimate thing, and allowing people to touch it is no small thing for me.”

“Your hair? Why your hair?” Cullen breathes.

_She let me unbraid her hair. Last night. She gave me a gift and I did not realize as much._ He does not know how to take that thought apart, so he settles for tucking it away – tucking it alongside the red thing in his chest that still pricks sharply, sweetly, in her company. 

“I shouldn't have so much of it. It's dangerous, and it gets in the way.” Gathering up a fistful of her own hair, she continues. “It is costly to maintain and takes a fair portion of my time each morning. It is my one vanity, and my one comfort.”

“Comfort?”

“Aye,” Mirèio laughs, though it is perhaps too sharp to be genuine, or all that joyful, “I was raised in castell by a man who had not expected to be a father to a girl-child. To a mage. My only companion was my strange cousin, who was as wide eyed and desperately lonely as I was.”

At this, washed under the still, black current of Mirèio's words, Cullen tenses. He has wanted this for a long while now: a greater understanding of where she came from, the hearth she called home, the cradle that forged her. He had not been expecting _loneliness._

“Lonely?” he questions, tongue carefully bare of inflection. “I thought you had siblings. Parents who loved, ah,” a murmur, “my apologies, love you.”

“I do.”

“Then why lonely?”

“For a hundred reasons that perhaps are not to be discussed after such an exquisite venture, joli.”

Cullen frowns, stares up into the too-sharp blade of her face and wonders at the gentle sadness. The old memories that trace their old footsteps across her eyes with something not too distant from bitterness. Old, old bitterness. 

Mirèio sighs, an odd little twitch of her lips casting the shadows wide, away from Cullen's view. 

“When I first arrived, Llorenç did not quite know what to do with me, and Arnau, my cousin,” she smiles wide and white as the noon day sun, “hardly had an easier time of it. Arnau was restless, sad. So was I. This meant we had only each other – the same playmate who always wore the same face. More often than not, Uncle forgot to trim my hair. One day Arnau and I were wrestling in the dirt and it got badly tangled, turned into an utter mess. He was so apologetic and I was so frustrated, as frustrated as a child of almost nine can be. We crept back into my chamber and he spent a turning of the glass picking out all the twigs and dirt, untangling and clumsily braiding my terrible mess of hair. It calmed us both down, and it's been ours ever since. I cannot tell you how frustrating it is to have to do it myself.” Mirèio sighs, a little colour stealing back into her voice. 

“Forgive me, I did not mean to hurt you,” and he finds there is a murmur of regret on his lips bright enough to sound overloud in the fresh silence, “I did not mean to pry. Only I – I would like to know. More. Know you more.”

“It is an old hurt, joli. Very old.” Her words are warm, gentle, welcoming. “And I will tell you.”

“But?” Cullen chuckles, wedging deeper into her arms, beyond pleased to feel the scrape of her nails in the tangled mess of curls at the nape of his neck.

“On a day that hasn't begun with me pressing you into my mattress?” Mirèio shrugs, teeth sharp against her bitten lips, laughter high in her grey eyes. 

Cullen snorts; chokes. “Maker willing, there will be few of those indeed.”

And then Mirèio is howling, laughing, rolling them over to curl their frames back together, the gilt beauty in her arms going with a deep, rumbling chuckle of his own. 

“Hush for a moment, Cullen.” Mirèio continues, dizzy with the sudden, inexplicable ease of it all. “Let us enjoy a few more moments of peace before I have to race out of my own chambers like a thief to steal us some food before the castle either rises with the sun or, Maker forbid, some other fool knocks on my door.”

She pushes her nose into the back of his neck, squeezes Cullen's chest, nails flicking rough and quick over one of his nipples before settling flat against the steady beat of his heart. “Besides, you should perhaps consider drawing yourself a bath while I am gone.”

“A bath?” Cullen huffs, disappointment thick on his tongue. “In your quarters?”

“Unless you would very much enjoy marching down to the barracks in last night's tunic and breeches. After all, you still wear my little necklace round your throat,” Mirèio says with a perverse sort of amusement. She punctuates her words with a rough swipe of her thumb over the nearest red welt on Cullen's throat, and drinks down the delicious little noise that scrapes off his tongue. 

Cullen flushes hotly, hips twitching up and toes curling against the sheets; he's still tucked close enough to Mirèio's heat that he knows she can feel the indelicate shiver creeping up his neck.

He twists until can see the neat, white rows of her teeth. Her laughter is honey'd yet rough, tongue darting out to wet her red lips slick again. All he desires is for her to make that noise in the back of her throat: the one that leaks from her when he opens his mouth to her without her tongue touching his lips first.

Quick as he can manage, Cullen props himself up and twists in her arms, darts out and nips at her lips, her tongue; draws her note of surprise between his teeth as if he were pulling coins from her wet mouth. 

That gets him what he wants.

He's flat on his back in one rough breath, her shadow falling over him, her hair a river and a promise.

“I should send Fiona out to pick dragonthorn until her fingers bleed,” Mirèio grunts, words a bur of outrage and frustration. “And you,” she snaps, crushes their mouths together, pulls away and finds Cullen arching up to bring them back again, “you should – I should.” 

She hasn't a Void forsaken clue as to what Cullen should do. What she should do. None. Nothing. This isn't a mindless fuck. Not a brief slaking of her intemperate lust. No. Nothing of the sort. 

The man beneath her looks as if he's swallowed the sun, as if he's just passed through a great, terrible desert and has only just brought his lips to water. 

_Maker's fucking mighty Breath, what am I supposed to do?_

_Asha. This is like Asha. But not. Not like that. Not at all._

Distantly, beyond the sudden ringing in her ears, she hears: “stay here and fuck me as you promised?”

There it is again: that feeling as if she's been struck clean through. She wants and will have and she knows it. She's a fool and she's caught and she knows it.

_Maker take these fucking tow-headed dog-lords. Did I not learn my lesson the first time?_

“See?” Mirèio quips, holds her teeth too sharp against her tongue, “this is why I do not dally with Fereldans. Too pretty for your own good. Damn tongues never move fast enough, but the colours you wear,” she says with a sigh, chuckling deep in the back of her throat, “oh, but there's nothing finer.”

“I beg your pardon? Colours?” Cullen laughs, and then her arms are around his torso and she's dragging him up the bed, back to the nest of pillows and the thick dusting of sunlight crowning the headboard, the sheets, the great yellow coverlet barely clinging to the frame.

Cullen's head hits the pillows and the dust flies up, the scent of feathers and the syrupy-soft taste of warm sunlight touches his tongue, fills the unquiet bits of him with something akin to silence. Mirèio settles over top him, her knees beside his thighs, and they observe one another like so much unknown territory. Like unmarked maps. 

Mirèio leans forward, tucks her hands under the pillow beneath Cullen's head, and brings their foreheads together; his little noise of disappointment does not go unnoticed. 

“Don't think I cannot hear that,” she sighs.

Cullen's hands curl around her waist, fingers tracing the lines of her back, and he snorts, frustration plain in the set of his mouth. 

“I do hope you are aware of just how _hard_ your advisors worked to give Skyhold, and you above all else, this day of rest?”

“Oh?” Mirèio smiles, lips curling up silver bright.

“You are the Inquisitor.”

“Aye.”

“Can you not just tell the woman to go away?”

“Go run yourself a bath, joli. I'll be back in a little while.”

“No.”

His fingers are insistent, and there is something very unhappy in the tightness round his eyes. To Mirèio, it almost appears as if he is afraid she will not return. And once again, she's not entirely sure how to approach that, how to bridge the subject of his growing concern without drawing out the less than pleasant history still crowding close between them.

This is the best she can manage. Especially considering the quality of the man between her legs. A man who just so happens to be as stubborn as he is brave. Beautiful, stubborn Cullen. Once he gets something between his teeth, he'll worry at it until he's bloody at the edges, and above all else she doesn't want him to do that right now.

“It's dwarven, if that aids you in deciding.”

“What?” 

“The bath,” Mirèio murmurs, “it runs hot and cold. I had the dwarves who refurbished the bathhouse in the undercroft install a water-closet up here. Reminds me of home, of Castell Trevelyan. You will enjoy it.”

At this, Cullen chuckles, shakes his head. “You had a bath installed? Only Orlesians and Tevinter magisters have running water.”

“Much of the northern Marches has rudimentary plumbing, joli.” Mirèio chuckles through her reply, shaking her head. “We were, after all, the territory Tevinter held onto the longest. Also Ostwick is very rocky, and much of our water is either straight from the sea or hauled from the Minater. It was easier to deal with the Carta, barter for aid from their craftspeople. Better for the farms, for our people.”

Cullen stares up into her face, eyes held fast to the red bow of her mouth, and knows pleasure tied tight to disappointment. “I would have you know I do this begrudgingly.” He narrows his eyes, the corner of his mouth curling sourly. “With the utmost irritation.”

Mirèio quirks one dark brow high, and gives him an inelegant snort. “Thank you for informing me, Cullen, I would never have guessed otherwise.” His face softens, a little of that sourness bleeding into something that might be hurt. Or more of that hard, awkward disappointment. Or something else entirely.

She leans down and kisses it from his mouth, eases it out with her teeth and the rough pads of her thumbs brushing over the little marks round his neck. She does not stop until he sighs, until the tightness round his eyes gentles, falls away.

“You will have time,” Mirèio punctuates, lips gliding along the rough stubble at Cullen's jaw, “I will have time. We will have time. There is no great rush.” She knots her fingers in his hair, curls sweat-damp and tangled, and brings her mouth back; he opens without even a pretence at hesitation.

Whatever he might have said, she swallows it down and slides off, and Cullen gives her leave to do so with only a little, fierce grip of her hand in his.

He watches as she roots around for breeches, twists up the thick banner of her hair and gropes for boots that look far too good on her magnificent legs.

He watches her stop in the sun-soaked frame of the door, watches as she bows to him with a quick little quirk of her lips. And then she is gone, leaving him with the rattle of iron bolts and the creeping silence of a fortress still mostly at rest, and a courtyard still deep in that particular lassitude that only rears its head on the best of festival-days.

_A bath? Andraste's Mercy, I do not want a bath. I want her to come back._

_Does it truly matter, in the grand scheme of things, if I spend the next handful of moments desperately wishing increasingly more unpleasant fates on the head of the Grand Enchanter?_

No one hears his laughter, or his frustration. That is both a disappointment and a relief.

Mirèio might return at any moment, and here he lays, sweaty and sticky with his own leavings, hair a ruin and skin stung from neck to thighs. He finds there is another merry chuckle on his tongue, the noise a surprise to his own mouth. 

That was not even a third of what he wanted from her, but it is a start. A beginning to move forward from. Forward to some unknown destination he cannot mark out or predict. Cannot plan for, or defend against. Besides, against her? Defence against Ostwick's great Bear? No. There is no hope in that, and no desire in him for such a thing.

Cullen sucks in a deep breath, finds some odd, crooked grin on his face and realizes one thing: the room is ripe with the scent of sex, of sweat and pressing bodies, of release. Mirèio's wide bed reeks of him. 

Maker's fucking Breath, one of the launderers will wash these sheets. Cullen does not know if that is horrifying or profoundly arousing, and his lust wars sharply with his caution. 

The thought of parading himself down to the baths used by all of Skyhold sits about as neatly as the thought of the launderers chatter at the ruin of their Inquisitor's sheets. Which is to say, it makes him flush hotly, makes him shiver. 

He drags himself out of the bed with a groan, his legs as steady as a colt's, and stumbles blindly for this mysterious water closet Mirèio told him of. 

The first door is a little closet stuffed to the rafters with enough cloth, wool, and yarn to make a crafts-merchant giddy, and Cullen wonders briefly if Mirèio can fashion garments as well as she and her House can sell the materials. The thought of her clever fingers taking up the delicate art of embroidery is an odd one, and so he sets it aside and chooses the next door. 

_Oh._

The room is small, but built for warmth, for comfort. There is what looks like some sort of privy in the farthest corner, but nearest the door is a wide, gilt mirror and a little table and stool. Guilt pricks at him, tells him he should not be so bold with the collection of her personal things scattered round, but he is too curious by far for even a little restraint. 

Cullen runs his fingers over the trinkets: a delicate looking silver backed brush. He finds himself smiling at the golden pomegranates he now recognizes as belonging to House Tolivara decorating the long handle. There is the torq from last night, ram's horns bright against the dark wood, and a collection of bottles of various sizes. A hastily wrapped bundle of correspondence, House Trevelyan's seal on each yellowed fold of parchment.

He picks up the smallest, most elaborately decorated vial, and the damn thing feels too delicate in his big hands; he pulls the stopper out with the soft little pop and the scent of oranges and tangled herbs greets him. 

It is too much.

Too intimate. 

He feels, for a moment, like a shadow clinging to something far too soft for its ugly hands. The bottle rejoins its brethren with a soft clink, and Cullen turns away, doesn't try to catch his reflection in the mirror.

The bath is no better than her neat little table: a wide, copper tub deep enough to hold at least three others.

Cullen flushes at the thought. Doesn't know what to do with himself in this manner of silence. So he settles for mindless action, for the soap and the sudden noise of water filling the tub. It's an odd sort of music, and he lets it carry the thorns in his head away. 

When he slides in he knows the water is far too hot, but he needs the sting, needs the prickling bite of heat against the marks that decorate his frame. 

He does not _need_ her to come back, but he _wants_ her to, and quickly.

Gathering up a lungful of air, Cullen closes his eyes and eases down. The water covers over his ears, his hair, and the enfolding, thrumming quiet is enough to leech the noise from his head.

~ * ~


	9. I seek to hold the wind

~ * ~

“How did you know?” Cullen murmurs, watching Mirèio push a good portion of egg onto a slice of dark Ferelden bread. “That, whatever you did on the couch, how did you know?”

She takes a moment to chew, jaw working and gaze distant, fixed on the curling steam of their food. “This is a terrible answer...” 

Cullen laughs, and suddenly he does not know what to do with his hands. Leave them in his lap? Fiddle with the delicate handle of the tea cup? Rub the back of his neck?

No. 

None of that.

“Surely not,” he gentles, bringing one palm to rest on the table. He's not certain why, but the loose curl of his fingers eases something tightly coiled in him, makes him feel a little more open.

“It is,” is her reply, “and I am only glad it was of some use to you, Cullen, considering how great a risk it was. Also, I – I am not unfamiliar with its uses.” For a moment, she flounders, tongue catching between her teeth. “Mostly as it was of great help to me in my younger days. I thought, I hoped, you would find it comforting.” 

“You?” He questions, feeling as if he's just clenched his fist around old, thin threads he had not known were there. “You? Truly?”

“Ah,” she sighs with a rueful, too-sharp crook of her lips, “that's also a rather odd, unpleasant answer.” Her toast slides back onto the plate, and she grips her teacup tight, the hot liquid chasing the cold out of her throat. From over the rim of her cup, she regards the man before with a pointed lance of quiet. 

He nearly looks away, the weight of her grey eyes, her scrutiny, is nearly unbearable. Asking is not his right, not yet. Or, perhaps, it is more that _he_ does not feel that right is his. Not with Ferelden sitting like a stone between them – a stone she does not know is there. But he wants to know. 

“I – I would still like to hear it. I am unused to sharing. To explaining. To listening, sorry as that is. Templars do not spend a great deal of time discussing their feelings with others.”

Lyrium takes much: time, tongue, friends, body, memory. 

It eats and it eats until there is nothing left. Until all that remains is white bones; a white mind.

A noisy, drawn out breath leaves her chest and Mirèio pulls a leg up to rest her foot on the seat. Her knee begins to bounce in a nervous, jerking rhythm.

To Cullen, the sight is disconcerting. Profoundly so.

“As I told you in the greenhouse,” Mirèio begins with only a little, rough twitch of her lips to momentarily brighten her countenance, “my parents realized I could not stay in Ostwick and still remain free of the Circle.”

Cullen nods, tucks his other hand into the drawstring of his breeches to keep his fingers still.

“I was seven. Seven.” She mutters, unearths a little flower of bitterness in her mouth. “And no matter what parents say to their children, we do not always believe them.”

“Mirèio.” Cullen interrupts, finds a sharp stone of dread rattling around in the red mess of his chest. “If it is too painful – ”

The mage waves a hand, shaking her head. “No no, it is like I told you before: an old hurt. Also, I picked you open last night. That was unfair of me. You have asked twice now, and you should know. It is yours to ask, Cullen.”

He starts, fingers twitching against the cloth. 

“Besides,” she soothes, though the hard set of Cullen's jaw belies her effort, “the hurt was mostly my fault, I assure you.”

“Your fault?” There is anger now, and he must bite down hard on the hiss of his words. “How, what fault is there in a child of seven?”

“Much, when you are a mage.”

He has nothing. No words. Just a river of little, frightened faces standing in the towering shadow of the spire he'd bound himself to, each one a thin, frail bundle of grasping fingers and firmly shut mouths. Fifteen years of little faces and little bones and too-wide eyes bright with tears. Children with bruises. Children who flinched.

Distantly, he hears the low bur of her voice, and he is caught up in her threads, her old pain.

“I thought I had done something wrong. That they had decided I was too dangerous. Too much. I was a child and it didn't matter how much they hugged me, how much my father cried. None of it mattered, not to me, not then, because I was still being sent away.” Her knee continues to jerk, and her focus is far away, turned inwards.

_Is this what I looked like to her last night?_ It is an ugly thought, one that sits on his shoulders, heavy as a stone, and leaves an ashen taste in his mouth.

“My uncle is as much a father to me as my own is. Ah.” Mirèio stops, chagrin winning out against the dust of long-gone days. “I never remember to say their names. My father, Ferran, and my mother, Elisau, trusted Llorenç beyond measure. And they were right to do so. My uncle is a good man, and I owe him my life. I am who I am because of him. But I was a child, sent away from the only home I'd ever known, and now I was alone. Left with a man I barely knew, who in turn knew little about how to care for a child. A mage child. To make matters worse, we were each other's only company for a year before Arnau arrived from House Tolivara.”

_This is what you wanted._ A little voice in his head whispers. _Now do her the courtesy of listening before you let your stupid, self-effacing shame eat its way out your heart. Listen to her. You owe her that much. The Order did this, to her and her family. To every family in southern Thedas. You still believe in that. In the Circle. Will you tell her so?_

This is what it means to be a Templar.

These are the wages the Order reaps; the fruit that comes from its fields.

Cullen shakes his head, marshals his breathing into an even, measured thing he can keep a hand on, despite the prick of moisture in his eyes. He tries to catch her gaze, but her eyes slide away. 

“For that first year, and several after, I was a sorry thing. My magic was unpredictable, and quite strong. I never hurt anyone, but I came close to injuring myself several times. When something went wrong, I would panic. My childish reasoning was that if I was sent away before – I could be sent away again.” Something stops up her words, and Mirèio worries her lips between white teeth; even from across the little table, she can see how shocked, how unhappy Cullen is waxing. Perhaps if she gets this over with all speed, they can be quit of it and never mention it again. 

Her words begin again, tongue only a little frozen to the roof of her mouth.

“I understood nothing. I was too stubborn and too young and too afraid. It helped, on those days, to tuck myself away in cupboards, in the kitchen pantries, in the rafters of the stable. Anywhere small and quite where no one could see me be lesser.” Her fingers twitch, and she lets the tail of that sentence go, as if it were a wolf turning around to bite. “The closeness of it made me settle, helped with the fear. One day, a handful of months before Arnau arrived, I was digging in the little garden I'd made for myself along the southern wall. Just digging. But as I thought, thought of pushing the soil away and laying down the seeds, this great rushing force rose up.”

Cullen's breath stills in his chest, iron bands of alarm, of dread, wrapping around his lungs.

_That is what the Circles are for. To teach young mages control. To keep them safe._

The thought feels very like an invader, as if it is some unpleasant thing that has just dragged itself up from the mud of his mind; it makes him sick, makes the blood in his face leak down to his toes.

_Would she be as she is now, if she had been sent to Ostwick's Circle? To any Circle?_

Maker help him, but he knows. He _knows_ the answer.

“And it – I – knocked a hole in the retaining wall large enough to drive a nuggalope through.” 

Scrubbing a hand down her face, fingers digging into her eyes with an unkind force, she stops. Spends a moment in terrible silence, let's its teeth touch her again, like it did all those years ago. 

“I was horrified. I couldn't think of anything else. I was so sure, so certain that Llorenç would realize I was a monster. That I was a danger. A thing. One of those demon touched apostates,” and even now that word is a bitter lash in her mouth, a thing that makes her rage, turns her sharp, “just as the Chantry teaches. I couldn't breathe, couldn't think, couldn't move. I froze. And my uncle came tearing down to find me in the ruin. He just. Ah.” She mourns, shakes her head, loose finger turning into fists. “He just, just knelt down. Looked at me. I must have been babbling, panicking, because my words hurt him terribly and he simply gathered me up. His voice brought me home. Back to myself.”

A smile grows on her face, gentle and fragile and yet nothing so easy as a _smile_.

“It took me years to believe him. I was stubborn. Leapt to the worst conclusions. Spent too much time in my own head. I was my own worst enemy, and it took me years to unlearn that fear of myself, of being sent away, of not being good enough to merit my continued freedom. My fault. All of it. But I learned better. My odd little family in the mountains saw to that, but I made them work for it.” Mirèio laughs, bitter and bright and tangled in her own memories. “Maker did I make them work for it.” 

He must make some manner of noise: a rueful bleat or a noise of grief crushed between the glass in his throat, because she looks up at him. Looks down to the palm of his hand on the white cloth of the little table, and reaches out. 

Now he understands. 

Now he sees: she's slow, careful, because she's giving him a choice. 

Always. 

The outstretched hand is always a choice. 

He both hates and loves it in equal measure.

He does not want her to be gentle, but he longs for it just as fiercely.

When her fingers curl into his palm, Cullen drives the hammer down, beats away the shadow-thoughts and their little, needle teeth. _Here,_ he tells himself, _I want to be here, with her. I will be here with her._

“You know,” Mirèio begins, curling her long fingers down to brush against the soft skin at Cullen's wrists, “perhaps it is the merchant-prince in me, the hard-nosed accountant.” 

Cullen laughs, and she finds a quick little grin on her lips.

“But perhaps we could. Ah.” She pauses, words stinging the tip of her tongue. “I know it will not be easy, not clean, but when something ugly comes up between us, perhaps we could treat it like a transaction?”

“Transaction?” Cullen frowns, shivering against the steady whisper of her warm fingers against the sensitive skin at his wrist.

Mirèio hums, a rough sound in the pit of her chest, and says: “As if we were trading coins, something hard for something soft.” 

Cullen hasn't any thought as to how to reply. His thought to his past is to simply hurl it at her feet. To let her pick through the ugliness as she pleases, as he is prepared to let her do so. Bit by bit. Hers is a trade. A negotiated thing that both wounds and comforts, rather than hands trading mysteries in the dark. A means to blunt the sharper edges they each carry around with such steadfast dedication. 

“I,” he speaks, begins with a little note of hesitation before he gathers up his iron in the gaps between his words, “I do not think I understand you at all, Mirèio, but, Andraste's Sainted Blood, I want to. Whatever you will give, I will have.” Her fingers tighten in his, and something loosens. “Though I am starting to see why you choose Josephine for the lion's share of trade and diplomatic tasks. The two of you are quite similar in that regard.”

“Oh no, joli.” Cullen nearly shines at that, the white of his face turning to pink cheeks and a softer jaw. “Princesa is much more astute than I am. And much more patient. My kindness, my patience, has limits. Josephine's has none.”

“Like myself and that charming Duchess?” Cullen mutters, his grin turning as crooked as hers. “The poor lad who stepped on her dress got enough coin to drink for a week, the others were so glad to have that silly bird stop her complaining. The Ferelden Arl who intervened to distract her further was equally as worthy of note.”

“You know,” she laughs, returning to her tea and toast, “I find I'm learning to enjoy Ferelden highborns as much as I enjoy Ferelden farmers. It's the blunt sort of honesty. It must be your language. You can't play silly little games when you speak Ferelden. I like that.”

He flushes, finds a chuckle waiting in his chest. “Do you have any idea how badly the senior Captains harassed me when I first arrived in Kirkwall? My accent was terribly thick, and I could not for the life of me understand theirs.” Cullen offers up, careful to step around the unpleasant bits. “Every City-State in the Marches speaks their own blend, including Kirkwall. Some manner of native Marcher mixed with Planasene and Tevene. None of you make any sense!”

Mirèio tips her chin up, laughter gravel bright in the quiet of her chambers. “Cullen, I thought you liked Marcher poetry?”

“I do!” he replies hotly, “but that doesn't make it easy to understand. Your verbs run wild. Half your words have genders. Half do not. At least with Tevene, I know what the sentence should look like no matter the words stuffed into it.”

For a moment she quiets, flicking her fingers out to nudge his open. “You're a learned man, joli.” Mirèio sighs, delight in equal measure to her admiration. “How on the Maker's green earth did you teach yourself all this?” 

The pads of her fingers are skittering over his palm, her sharp little nails tracing the lines, the rough calluses, the nicks and scars. Cullen is utterly still under her attention, pleasure and hesitation tied mercilessly around his tongue. 

“The Circles are places of learning.”

Her eyebrow lifts, and he treads carefully. So carefully.

“Mostly that learning is meant for the mages, but Ferelden's Circle was lax, more open. I spent most of my night watches in the library. Reading. When the Order transferred me to Greenfell, and then further on to Kirkwall, I continued to use the library. Which certainly explains why I never got invited to the Rose. Not that I would have gone, of course,” he adds, cheeks heating up. 

“The Rose?” Mirèio mouthes. “Is that a – ”

“House of ill-repute.” Cullen interrupts, scrubbing a hand over the back of his neck. 

_Ah, Flames,_ he gripes, _I'd managed to go nearly all morning not doing that._

“Oh!” Mirèio laughs, fingers trailing back to the skin of his wrists. “You mean a pleasure house. I quite like those. There are a handful in Rivain I have thoroughly enjoyed, so much so,” she adds, with a little, wicked grin on her face, “that I even have a reputation. They too call me the Bear of Ostwick, even in Lomeryn.” She brings her free hand up, crooks her fingers apart and sticks her tongue between.

Cullen chokes on his bread and scrambles for his tea. Her laughter rattles like stones, like Sera's, only much deeper in her chest. Despite the fact that he is nearly choking on his own tongue, he's laughing right along side her. 

“No,” he drawls, even through the wheezing, “surely not.” The bread won't go down, and so he knocks a fist against his chest to force the crumbs down. “You? I could never have imagined.”

“Ah,” Mirèio chortles, grinning through the space in her fingers, “there's the tongue I enjoy so much.”

“Oh,” he replies, finding himself breathless and reckless, all in one tangled mess beneath his ribs, “I am glad. Perhaps next time, I can use it for something other than talking?” And just like that the food is forgotten. Her fingers are still in the cup of his palm, and there is a smile on her face as red as the colour in his cheeks. 

They stand almost in time with one another, but by some strange chance, Cullen manages to get his hands around her face before she's quite close enough to give him her lips. An inelegant snort of air hits him in the face and Mirèio drags him the last few inches, fingers tangling in the string round his waist. 

Awake is a curious word. And they are both very awake. 

Knotting his fingers in the cold wealth of her hair, Cullen pulls Mirèio down, unconcerned with the pretence of beginning with his mouth closed. Their noses meet rather sharply, and she laughs against his tongue, chasing the taste of fruit and tea in the hollow of his cheeks before sealing their lips again. Her hands are insistent, rubbing with a bruising strength against his hip bones, down to grope at his backside. 

“And suddenly,” Mirèio mutters, giving each word with a little nip of her teeth, “I am very sorry to be leaving tonight.”

“What?” He snarls, laying two fingers against the sharp jut of her collarbone to push her away.

Cullen searches out her face, drags his eyes down her taller frame. She's a sight, even clothed: her hair is still wet, tangling over her shoulders like ropes of seaweed, and the loose shirt she wears is damp against her skin, clinging; her mouth is as crooked as ever, and her eyes are steel-bright. And Cullen still hasn't touched her. It makes his mouth water, and his tongue sharp. 

He still hasn't touched her, and she's leaving.

“The Golden Empress is holding that ridiculous little ball of hers at the conclusion of Wintermarch,” Mirèio speaks with a dry, almost mirthless humour in her tone, “and I have five, perhaps six weeks to secure an invitation. We will need a fortnight or more to devise a strategy that does not end in a hoard of demons razing Orlais to the ground and then salting the earth for good measure. No doubt you and Josie will snipe at one another over whether or not we bring a hammer or a little knife.”

Cullen can feel the muscles of her jaw pull tight, distaste and irritation sitting high on her tongue, and he finds in himself a similar answer. Only, his irritation is turned towards an entirely different matter. 

“When you said we would have time, I assumed, Mirèio, that you meant later today. This evening. Not nearly a month hence.” His fingers gather up a thick strand of her hair, and he pauses, stares up into her face.

“May I?”

Mirèio's assent is a sharp nod, and an even sharper chuckle.

Twisting the sleek hair round his hand, he tugs at it sharply. He watches her closely, watches her eyes become hooded, the remains of last night's kohl turned to smoke under the burnishing morning light. 

Cullen stills, a little noise held between his teeth. 

He tugs again, and her eyes close, but only for a moment.

“Joli,” Mirèio warns, snaking a hand up to curl her fingers around his chin, nails scraping lightly at the corner of his mouth, “that is most unwise. Especially since I cannot answer you as you would like. Not right now.”

“I'm sending Fiona to the Hissing Wastes.” Cullen rasps, tucking his face into the sweep of her neck to put his lips against the little hammer of her pulse. “I do not care if she was once the Grand Enchanter. That woman ruined _weeks_ worth of planning.”

“Oh?” Mirèio chortles, mouth snapping shut as Cullen's teeth drag across her skin, his stubble painting red across her skin. “Are you trying to tell me, joli, that you have been planning this,” she brings her hand down hard on his backside, knocking him against her frame with a strangled yelp in his throat, “for weeks? Considering I had to run you down in the war-room, I find that very hard to believe.”

“Well,” Cullen laughs, hiding his flush in the elegant lines of her neck, a fistful of her hair pressed to his nose, “not this, specifically. Thank you for offering up a better option.” Being so close to her, Cullen is treated to the sound of her laughter sifting through her chest, the little tremor of her shoulders as she shakes with the noise. 

“And now we really must get on with it, joli.”

At this, Cullen lets go the fistful of her hair and looks up into her face: quiet, welcoming, open. 

“Besides,” Mirèio gentles, bringing a hand up to brush the pad of her thumb over the little scar at Cullen's lip, “our separation will give you time to decide, in exquisite detail I might remind you, exactly what you want from me.”

“Must you be so careful?” He murmurs, leaning into the palm of her hand. 

“Yes, I must.”

“Why?”

“As I told you last night, I've been rough before, joli,” Mirèio replies with no small portion of shame in her words, “and not rough in a pleasurable way.”

Cullen's brow furrows, a little stitch slicing down between his brows, and brings his hand up to cover over hers, holding her fingers to his skin. “I find that hard to believe.”

Her answer is a little, bitter grin.

“I learned my lesson very well, Cullen.”

“I am glad for that, then. Somewhat.” He adds, though it does not ring like the after thought he intended it to be. He would dearly like to know who taught her that lesson, but he half knows the answer. The answer shares a name with the Queen Mother, the great Dame of House Campana, but he'd very much like to have it from her mouth, rather than his own thoughts. 

Mirèio blinks, a little portion of shock drawing her face tight as a bowstring. She discards it with equal speed. They have time. “I will be back soon enough, Cullen. And you will negotiate with me, I promise. You will tell me why you want me to be rough with you.” She brings her teeth down sharply over the word _rough_ , and the shiver that draws from his body is almost enough for her to give in. Almost.

She settles for slotting her mouth over his and kissing him until they are both breathless, until all is slow and sugar-sweet. A lingering press, a promise of what is to come that she eases in under the wet hum in Cullen's throat.

They separate after a moment, both a little sour at the forced nature of their impending parting, and Cullen retreats to the pile of clothing Mirèio had smuggled in for him. His boots, cloak and one of Josephine's gifts – the green damask tunic patterned with odd, intricate latticework.

By the time he's got his clothing on, she's dressed as well, busily wrapping a generous two yards of Trevelyan yellow around her waist with practiced ease.

“Is there a pattern to that?” He asks, curiosity growing with every motion.

“Yes.” Mirèio replies, tucking a finger against her hipbone to loop the leading edge under and work up through the twist.

“Yes?” Cullen continues, waving a hand for the woman to continue. “How so? What does it mean?”

Mirèio shakes her head, clicks her tongue against her teeth. “It's meant to tell others, mostly other highborns, that I am a Marcher, that I am from Ostwick, that I am a Trevelyan, and the Teryn's Heir. That I am unmarried.” Cullen bristles at that, and she sorts the reaction away for later consideration, hiding away her surprise by the motion of her hands at the intricate knots she's nearly finished laying into the sash. “It's called a taillole. Mostly it's a northern Marcher custom, but many highborns,” she mocks snidely, “have similar identifiers.”

“Like Orlesian masks.” Cullen finishes. “You get all that out of a few yards of fabric and a handful of knots?” He laughs, pinches the bridge of his nose. The reminder of the high House she inhabits is not one he is particularly appreciative of under the circumstances. Rather, he does not want to be reminded of her station in opposition to his. Not right now.

Standing in front of him, Mirèio shrugs her broad shoulders and reaches up to adjust the white fleece at her neck and chest. “Nobles are an odd, officious bunch. At least the ones in Ferelden and the Marches try to be a little honest in their conduct.”

Cullen chortles, a lopsided sneer on his lips. “Well, I must admit I'd rather take on the Bannorn stark naked with only a dull knife for protection than spend a moment in an Orlesian salon. Even in full armour.”

“Aye,” Mirèio laughs, “as would I.” 

And then she is holding out her hand, and he is walking towards her, reaching out with that damnably alarming ease he cannot quite manage to neatly sort away.

“Shall I make the run by Captain Rylen first, or would you prefer to clamber out down my balcony?” Mirèio murmurs, lips against the shell of Cullen's ear. “I'm quite sure the vines will take your weight.”

“Please,” Cullen replies with a rough bow, “ladies first. I'm sure the Captain is too muddled by last night's wine to notice either of us.”

They are both chuckling merrily as the heavy door closes behind them.

~ * ~

A scraping noise calls him out of his reading, not that he enjoys the endless reports on resource procurement, the state of their armouries, or dossiers Josephine diligently prepares for his use on the trade price of silverite, steel and iron. This one concerns sightings of wild horses that might be passed on to Master Dennet, so at least it is valuable.

He watches one long finger nudge a bowl across his desk, and other than the top of her dark head, Cullen cannot see the woman seated on the floor, legs kicked out to the open door. 

The bowl nudges closer and he laughs, says: “Are those raspberries? However did you get raspberries, Mirèio? It's much too cold for fruit.”

“Hedge-mage,” she admonishes with a click of her tongue, “I've got a little orchard of summer fruit in the greenhouse. It's slow growing and I'm still getting used to the dirt, but I hope to be giving the kitchens a few bushels a week soon enough.” 

“Getting used to the dirt?” Cullen mouths, scratching at his chin. “Why do you need to get used to dirt?”

From the floor, Mirèio's rich chuckle knocks against the wood, the rafters, Cullen's chest. And oh but he enjoys her hardy, earth-heavy laughter far too much. “It's a difficult thing to explain, joli.”

“Try me, Mirèio,” he challenges. He will be the first to speak on the dangers of magic, the first to counsel caution. Yet, his time in the Inquisition has taught him that instinct is not always the best one to reach for. Being afforded the opportunity to see young mages educated without the shadow of a templar standing watch over all they do has been _confusing_ to say the least. 

“As you wish,” she begins. 

Behind the desk, Cullen can hear her shuffling around the parchment in her lap, the bright crinkle distracting from the nervous flutter in the pit of his belly. Blindly, he grasps for a scrap of that heedless bravery he needs in order to speak some of what is curling in his thoughts.

“After all, I find your, uh, green magic rather interesting. I've never seen it's like.” He keeps his tone even, neutral. He wants to know more. He does. But there is an old fear in him, not of her, but of how he will react to her magic, to the quieter notes of her power that remain alien to him. Wind magic is familiar. Fire is familiar. Ice. Lightning. Not earth. Not green. Not her. To know her is to know her magic, and he understands as much. But some things are hard to let go of, hard to untangle without drawing blood.

That earns him an indelicate snort. 

“You would not think so if you'd been to the east. I am a fumbling apprentice when tested against the skill of the Seers and their mages, and certainly nothing unique. I'm sure there are many like me here, in Ferelden, out in the wilds. Now if only I could convince Fiona of that and somehow weasel my way out of writing these damn lessons.”

“Are you sitting at the foot of my desk doing the work that woman interrupted our morning over?” Cullen hisses, leaning over the raspberries and his mess of papers to catch her eye. When she cranes her head back with that damned smile on her face, Cullen finds his eyes rolling skyward, a dry sort of chuckle in his throat. 

“Yes,” is her infuriatingly cheerful reply, “only I'd rather throw the whole thing into your fireplace and be done with it.”

A little gust of wind drags the sand on his floor around the office, the noise over-loud in the sudden silence. “Is there, is there something specific you do not enjoy about lesson plans? You are very good with words, Mirèio. I should think this would be easy for you,” Cullen murmurs, sinking back into his chair.

“Far from.” Mirèio interjects, words a little pinched. “It's not the lessons themselves. It's - Maker's balls, it's the words themselves.” She bites her words out, parchment rustling under her grip. “I'm not a fucking Circle trained mage.”

Cullen jolts, drops his papers.

“Mirèio?” There is an honest anger under her tongue, and he is wholly shocked by its presence.

“It's very like speaking a different language, Cullen. I'm not formally trained. I simply do not have the words she, or any other young mage needs. Fiona,” she mutters with a hard-nosed irritation, mulling over her words, weighting something against something else, “no, not just her. All the Circle mages, they are so regimented, so clear. There is a way, one way, and lines to follow, words to speak. A process and a reason behind that process. I do not, cannot, follow that method. My magic does not work in such a neat, orderly manner.”

Even without being able to see her directly, Cullen can hear the hunch in her voice. 

“How do you work, Mirèio?” Cullen breathes, hesitation wed fast to his curiosity.

A great, sour sigh leaves her, and an apple is tossed up into the air, its red flesh bright under the golden, noon-day sun. Cullen watches it rise up and fall back down, up and down, up and down until she deigns to speak again.

“It's a song. Magic, my magic, is a song. Each part is a different note, and when I string them along I know by the tone what the result will be. I think, I will, and it is. I command, and it is so.”

The apple flies up. Falls down.

“How do I communicate something like that to people who were raised in places like the Circles? Oh yes, I just listen to the dirt and the rock and the fire and the song in my head comes to my hands or into my mouth, and I shape that as I desire. Now you try it.”

A bitter snort. 

“So clear and easy to understand, wouldn't you agree? In all honesty, Cullen, I'd rather teach the little ones to grow fruits and vegetables. Just that, nothing else.”

“How do you grow those, by the way?” He asks, fingers itching in his gloves. She's been so careful, so gentle. Outside of the battle field, she rarely uses her magic in front of anyone. For the entirety of the year he has known her, she has only wielded magic in his presence once. Just once. At first he'd thought her nothing more than a mage with phenomenal self-control, but now he is beginning to see her, see her choices, with far more clarity than he ever might have expected. So he gives her the out, dangles it in front of her and prays that she'll take it, as he took her diversion when Ferelden loomed between them. 

He wants her to leave Skyhold with a smile on her face. He wants her to leave his company with good thoughts, and a desire to return as swiftly as possible. 

“With a whisper.” Mirèio sighs, and the apple stops its ruthless bouncing. “I put the seeds in the dirt and the notes help me guide my magic. It's one long breath, in the silence between is a humming, a ringing that flows through every part of me, and on the inhale, green. Push that out, into the seeds, and then shoots, plant, fruit. Tree. Flower. Herb. Vegetable. See, so clear and easy to understand. Utterly useless.”

Cullen opens his mouth to speak, though he is entirely unsure as to what he wishes to tell her, and finds a messenger stood in the doorway. His threads fall away from him, and he is angry for the interruption.

“Inquisitor?” The interloper queries, ducking into the Commander's office with a curious frown on her face. “Messere Pavus wishes to inform you that your companions are ready to depart. Uh.” The lass flushes. “And to please hurry up.”

With a rough bark of laughter, Mirèio hauls herself up and dusts her knees off, chain mail and sword jangling brightly. “You may tell Altus Pavus that Marchers do not flap about at the behest of Tevinter any more than we do other Marchers. I will be there when I am good and ready, lass, and thank you for the message.”

He finds himself half-way round the desk before she kicks the door shut with a boot, hard.

Cullen laughs along with the rattling hinges, feels himself pull taut as a bowstring when her hands land on him. She drags him forward and he reaches up, fingers tangling in the mess of her braids.

“Three weeks?” he snaps, finds his voice hoarse in the pit of his chest.

“Three weeks,” she mirrors back, breath ghosting over Cullen's lips. 

“I would ask one thing of you, before you go, Mirèio.”

“Good.” Mirèio says, and her answering grin is wide and white in the suddenly quieted office. “Ask.”

“I would ask, my lady, that do you me one favour: do not tarry.” This time, he does not wait for her, but pulls her down, the tip of his nose nudging against hers before he presses his lips to hers. Opens to her without her tongue gliding against his lips. She makes that little noise, the one that is only half a breath and mostly teeth, and he shivers against her. 

Delirious. Too full. Too much. Well beyond whatever he might have dared to hope for from her.

He tries for bravery. For certainty. Even if he does not have the firmest ground to stand upon, he'd rather try. Rather show her.

“I want more.” He breathes against her, revelling in the iron of her grip. “I want more from you, Mirèio, and you,” he punctuates with his teeth, with his tongue in the wet of her mouth, “you will give that to me when you return, yes?”

“Yes.”

Three long strides and she has walked them back, back to the mess of his desk, and Cullen fumbles blindly for the raspberries. Mirèio takes great pleasure in watching, eyes sharp and fingers poised against the curve of his jaw, talons dressed in ivory. 

Cullen picks out a red, fleshy berry and pops it into his mouth. He chews, sweetness bursting on his tongue with all the strength of a hot summer sun. 

Mirèio draws the sweetness out with her teeth, with her tongue, and when she goes, she leaves him with her taste in his mouth: warm, wet earth.

Cullen watches her go out from beneath the shadows of Skyhold's great gates with a handful of berries in his hand. 

He eats them slowly, watching as the party becomes dots of ink against great, white teeth, and when the raspberries are gone, he goes in search of more.

~ * ~

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know this is slow going, but I'd really love to hear from you guys.
> 
> Even if it's to tell me how terrible the whole thing is.


	10. Who list her hunt, I put him out of doubt,

~ * ~

_Joli,_

_I have taken the liberty of leaving you a guide, should you decide you wish to enter the greenhouse while I am gone. I know I told you its use was yours some time ago, but I neglected to remind you of such before I departed._

_I do apologize for that._

_So now I must explain in a letter, rather than in person:_

_The white cloth rope leads to the orchard._

_The blue leads to the vegetables._

_There is also a red one that leads to the herbs, though I would caution against touching._

_Most of the plants are meant for alchemy, and Dorian and I have not had a moment to properly label the sections. Master Adan is aware that I am gone and the greenhouse will not open for him. If, however, he should see that it will open for you, he may enter with you to take what he needs. The dragonthorn is for him, as is the embrium and royal elfroot. I have no idea why I just wrote that. Did your time in the Circle library include lessons in botanical identification? I'll have to ask you when I return. Perhaps I could send your soldiers out to collect flowers, in addition to the rocks? Terrible waste of your excellent training, as far as I'm concerned._

_Please see the little schedule I've left beside this letter. It slipped my mind. And while I would merrily blame the quality of your delightful company, we both know that is not entirely accurate, is it joli?_

_It rains in the greenhouse. Hopefully it is not raining as you are reading this._

_The whole greenhouse gets a watering every seven days. I would not recommend remaining inside when that happens. If, however, you are still reading this and it is raining, or will begin raining shortly, there is an oilskin under the table for your use. I do apologize if you are wet. Though I will admit the thought of you soaked to the bone in my greenhouse is not without its charms._

_Perhaps another time._

_The rings you will see staked into the dirt are enchanted to produce rain. The watering pattern depends on the runes, their order, and the needs of the plants growing within the ring. Read the schedule, and be sure not to tarry in these areas when the rain starts._

_Vivienne and I spent days crafting the runes, and Dorian and I lost weeks devising the silverite wire apparatuses that make the runes function. Tevinter mages do not seem the type to want to maintain lush gardens, but he tells me the solariums of the highborns in Minrathous and Vyrantium are passionately devoted to green things. Which I find rather shocking, to say the least. I maintain that Tevinter could still stand to have their teeth pushed in, but I won't tell our northern bird that if you do not._

_Oh, please do try to avoid being caught by Sera. She will demand you bring her peaches. I left her six, but she'll run out fast, and if she realizes that you have access you will get no rest from her pestering._

_Lastly, or nearly so I suppose, I know we separated rather abruptly prior to my departure and I wish for you to understand that if you feel the need to discuss what we picked at over morning meal, I am happy to oblige. I was not lying when I told you that much of the more unpleasant moments of my childhood are old hurts. As much as could be settled, has been settled. For many years now. I hesitate only our of an abundance of caution, for some of what happened, and much of how I feel in regard to certain topics, will be hard for you to hear. I cannot change how I feel about the Order, or the Chantry. I cannot bend so far. I will not. But that does not mean I will shun your thoughts, or think less of you for believing differently._

_You are a southerner, through and through. And, save for the fickleness of luck, my life could easily have been the same as nearly all mages from Ferelden to Orlais, and the Marches._

_If speaking of difficult things is easier in a letter, by all means, joli, send me letters until there is no ink left in your pot._

_No matter the subject or content, I will not turn you away._

_Now, as part of what I propositioned earlier: something soft, after something hard._

_One last request, joli, before I go back to Fiona's ridiculous lesson plans: take a moment, while I am gone, to nose around my quarters. Specifically in the general direction of my little library. You may find there are a handful of books which might aid you in settling on the matter of our next encounter. My appetites are wide, well-versed and rather varied. Whatever it is that you desire from me, you should know that it will most likely be quite familiar to me._

_Regardless of what you choose to do, please remember:_

_Ask, and it shall be so._

_With the utmost anticipation,_

_Mirèio_

_Lanquan li jorn son lonc e may_  
M'es belhs dous chans d'auzelhs de lonh,  
E quan mi suy partitz de lay,  
Remembra'm d'un' amor de lonh.  
Vau de talan embroncx e clis  
Si que chans ni flors d'albespis  
No-m valon plus que l'yverns gelatz.  


Cullen breathes in deeply, holds the taste in his mouth, on his tongue: dirt, green leaves, pine; damp grass, and the heady, nearly cloying scent of honeysuckle and peach blossoms. Why she's left these flowers here on her table is beyond him, but something tells him that she did not do this on a whim. Each bunch is expertly cut and neatly arranged, fresh as if she'd just clipped them a few moments ago, and the fragrance is thick, curling under his tongue and nose like un-gentle hands. 

The letter is tucked under the peach blossoms, and her schedule under the honeysuckle. 

He squints, picking through her spider-scrawl with care. For a noble woman, she has the oddest handwriting: sharp, economical, yet rigid. Not a word out of place. A scholarly mixing of Antivan and Northern Marcher, with just a touch of staid, stately Tevene. She picks words at random, little bits of her letter falling into these languages with ease.

Her hand is sure when she writes. Nothing wobbles, or slides. Nothing dives sharply into the corners or curls up beyond the margins set for each line. 

The poem she's left him is equally mysterious. His own collection is small, but steadily growing. To claim familiarity would be a lie, but he's versed enough to recognizes the Tevene roots from the Antivan, the Marcher from the Orlesian. Something about long days in May? A Marcher name for Bloomingtide?

Either he shall have to go to her library, go rooting through her collection for the rest of the poem, or he'll have to go to the only other soul in Haven who speaks northern Marcher: Maryden. Or perhaps Josephine.

He's not entirely prepared to ask Josephine. To stand directly before the woman and show her the poem written in Mirèio's hand. Have someone else read words meant for him, and him alone? No. He'll not share even that.

Oddly enough, he is at turns both frustrated and miserably grateful. Even the letter in his hand is a choice. An option. Nothing in it mentions the need for a reply. She offers him her ear, her understanding, but does not predicate it with a demand. Tis only an offer. Honesty and patience, there for his taking but not thrust at him. Simply waiting. She is so unbearably, frighteningly good at that: generosity with no expectation of reward. Openness with no care for a return of her coin. Not even the poem need be translated lest he desire to do so. Lest he choose.

Always it is her silver grin and her outstretched hand: green and marked, bared and rough. 

Choose. 

Ask.

Decide. 

All these little choices, these paths for him to walk that lead to places, to things, to moments he has little experience with as a templar, and as a man. Always choices. Choose this. Choose that. One or the other, or something else entirely. 

Choose. 

Oh, it is not as if he is unfamiliar with choice, with being given the opportunity to choose. It is the context. The element of intimacy in relation to his own person. He is well used to having only the choices of others to concern himself with. 

_Choose me, and I shall save your friends, or spurn me and watch them suffer._

_Shall you have Greenfell to recover, lad, or would you prefer something closer to home, to Honnleath?_

_The brand or the sword, Knight-Captain. Which shall it be?_

_Will you retrieve the Hawke girl on the morrow, or tonight?_

_Stand with us, Knight-Captain, when we arrest the Viscount?_

_Your concerns are immaterial, Knight-Captain. There is no room, right now, to accommodate them. Either we apply the brand more liberally, or the Gallows falls into disarray, and we run the risk of rooting out blood magic, mage by mage. So, I ask you again: the brand, or the sword?_

Take the lyrium, and remain safe. Or cast it off, and die. Go mad. 

Take that fool's run towards freedom. Get on his knees and pray for something other than death. Madness. Beg the Maker for the strength to endure his own memories. Throw his lot in with the old dogs in the mendicant hospital of the White Spire and see if if there is anything like _absolution_ for a man who stood in Kirkwall's Gallows with his eyes shut tight.

_Andraste preserve me, but I do not need these thoughts right now._

Her letter makes him smile, and makes him sharp, angry: a formless, directionless snapping that he cannot address. Does not want to at the moment. Not while stood in the sonorous, quite humming of her greenhouse, under then hand of her magic. 

If he keeps still enough, he can taste it on his tongue. 

Here, in this place, her magic is so thick it is as if she is breathing behind him, her hot mouth inches from the nape of his neck, her fingers at the soft underside of his jaw, nails drawing lines against his skin. 

But Mirèio is not here.

Above his head is a patch of fabric stretched wide like a tent, stakes set alongside the four corners of the blackwood alchemy bench; her witch lights tinkle soft as glass, knocking into one another like torch-bugs. A bit of treated cloth to keep the rain off the table? Witch lights to dry the cloth when the rain is finished?

Fifteen years a templar, and still he finds there is more to learn about magic. 

Magic has brought him great pain. Magic has knit his flesh, returned his blood. Saved his life. Twisted his heart and his vows and his mind. 

But here it is beautiful. And still he cannot, cannot let go. 

Always, he has stood firmly on one side of a great, Void deep chasm. A chasm so wide there was nothing in him that desired to bridge over that inky mouth. Now he wonders if there has been a bridge, a path across all along, or if there truly is any bridge at all. That is the worst thought of all, the one that bites deepest. For if there is no bridge across, is he meant to dwell in between – strung like an insect between fear and safety? Between all that she is, and all that he remembers. All that is slowly returning to him, the longer and longer he hold himself away from the blue ringing in that little bottle.

All that was, and all the might be.

Transfigurations 12:1 springs to his mind, but it only makes him laugh; his sourness feels like a wound in this pleasant, verdant silence.

_You came here for good things, Cullen. You should endeavour to leave as you arrived._

He chooses the white rope, and goes out to the orchard tucked away in the far eastern corner of her silverite and green-glass sanctuary. 

The trees press close, and he has only a little bit of black earth beneath his feet and the rope sliding against his palm to guide him on. 

Mirèio and Dorian are possibly the only ones who have walked this path, and the trail is narrow enough that they must have gone tucked close, side by side. 

He imagines them walking before him: shoulders brushing lightly, the long banner of her hair flicking back and forth under her jaunty gait, Dorian's little silver embellishments chiming merrily alongside Scivias' music. The low murmur of Tevene between them, heads bowed close together.

Odd. So phenomenally strange. 

Of all the people he has loved in his thirty and one summers of life, two of the dearest are mages. 

The third is a ghost. A thing of childish dreams, and ignorant longing.

_I learned my lesson very well, Cullen,_ she'd said with that wolfish smile on her proud face. Yet Cullen cannot help but wonder if he's learned his, or if he even understands what lesson he should have had in the first place. 

Ferelden is, was, still is many things. But a lesson? That thought is ugly, misshapen. If Ferelden was a lesson, then he has either learned the wrong thing entirely, or there truly is no reason, no order, no force in this world but chance and cruelty. 

Cruelty met with cruelty, time and time again. Over and over. 

The trail narrows and he nearly trips on a great, fat root. For a forest of less than a month's age, the roots are vast, and trailing deep. Somewhere not too distant from here, he can hear the whisper of rain; the sound is faint, but it curls along some sourceless wind that brings him the scent of heat and dirt and water.

A copse of ash trees stand in his way, and he slides through with only a little damage. Mercifully enough, he'd left his armour in his office. The hour is beyond late, and no one save the night rotation might have seen their commander creep into their Inquisitor's greenhouse in nothing save a tunic and his breeches.

He cannot account for the change in his mood. 

No, that is a lie even in his own head.

Perhaps if he'd gone to Mirèio's garden straight away, rather than wait nearly a week, the sting might not be so great. Perhaps if he'd not rushed off after she'd departed, the taste of fruit still bright on his tongue, and then stood like a useless fool in the silence at the entrance, he might be less sour now. Perhaps if he had not waited for the necklace of her teeth around his neck to fade into nothing before venturing into her garden, the unease that dogs him would not bite so deeply. Perhaps if he'd had her good letter first, rather than the one that has just arrived, he might not be quite so sharp. As it stands, that folio of parchment has brought along with its rustling pages a black and creeping poison that is busily eating away at the ground he's dug his feet into.

Perhaps if he'd sent her one of the myriad of half finished, overly honest and terribly inappropriate letters he'd drafted _before_ she'd sent that infuriating report back to him, he would not now be haunting the green landscape of this place like a preemptive spectre. 

Oh yes, the Inquisitor had gone out from beneath the gates with the intent of bullying an invitation to Halamshiral from the nearest, haughtiest Orlesian fool she could lay her hands on. And then she'd found Red Templars. 

Found their correspondence, and possibly their supply routes. 

_Samson._

Ducking low beneath a thick tangle of silver coin leaves, Cullen stumbles into an open space, and the tip of his boot touches a silverite ring nestled in the dirt.

_Oh,_ comes sliding off his tongue, though no one is present to hear. 

There is a wide, stupid grin on his face that he cannot account for, not in the slightest.

_Hedge mage_ , he hears in the softness of the rain over and away in the distance, in the chirring of leaves and the scent of flowers long past their season.

If Mirèio meant for this to seem like a some wild, tangled illumination torn straight from the pages of the old tales of the ages before Tevinter, before Andraste, she's produced quite the admirable, if unsubtle achievement: the orchard is dyed in shades of pink and white, dark branches heavy with crowns and curls in hues he's rarely seen before.

The air almost sings with the heat of the orchard's bright scent: a riot of nearly choking sweetness undercut by the sharp burr of citrus.

_I lead an army,_ he reminds himself with a wry grin, _the greatest in all of southern Thedas. I am trusted to do so. Each day I choose, make decisions that affect the futures of thousands who trust me with their lives. Maker's throne, why can I not do that for myself? I chose to leave the lyrium behind. Why is surety so hard here? When I want it most, why is it so hard?_

He leaves Samson and his red Knights – and his prickling, thorny thoughts – beneath the trees.

Cullen does not know quite what to do with himself. 

He chooses the apple tree, and pretends his knees do not crack like an old man's when he tucks his back against the rough bark; the ink bottle and parchment rattle loudly in the silence.

The whole mess is a little ridiculous. A grown man, a Knight, sulking and prevaricating in the lush garden of a woman who has offered him precisely what he has desired for months on end. Offered up the sun and the moon and all its' trailing stars to a shadow thing that did not have the guts to ask it for himself until he was already naked in her arms. 

And now he's dragged great tracts of red through this place: ugly thoughts that cling to his shoulders and his throat with the most wretched intimacy. That bothers him deeply. Stings. He has better moments, and better touches to dwell on. 

These things, these shadows, are not wanted. And yet they will not go. 

Quite simply, these dark thoughts rankle because now he knows what she feels like at his back, what she feels like slung over his frame. Taste. Scent. Weight. Heat. The rasp of her fingers and the drag of her tongue. The bite of her teeth. Now he knows her hair is thick and cold, not warm, light silk. 

He knows and he is tired of this nonsense. Tired to the white of his teeth. To his bones. 

Sitting beneath the gauzy white apple buds, Cullen scrapes away at the knot in his mind until he's got his teeth round something better. Something that has nothing to do with Samson and his Red Knights.

Sat beneath the tree, Cullen cannot help but think how strange his life has become: a peasant lad from Honnleath – a lad who wanted nothing more than to serve the Maker and His Bride, who wished to be a Knight on bent knee, raised up to a higher calling, a higher mind, a higher life – sat here amongst the weavings of an apostate, with that mage's letter clutched in his hand like a stone to cling to in the racing current.

How odd. 

How odd that he has _this_ now, and the lad... 

The lad got so little. 

What part of him could have expected to lead a life that would bring him to a hedge-mage's orchard, to Antivan cherry trees, or neatly laid out rows of dusky grapevines? Never mind olives, or oranges, or peaches, or lemons. Or red-tongued saffron. 

_She can raise stones and roots from the earth as if they were light as feathers. She falls like a hammer, sword a lance of fire and thunder in the palm of her hand. And yet this is where she chooses to spend her magic? What use is this to her?_

And then he remembers:

Farmer. Sheep-herder. Merchant-prince. Wanderer. Accountant. 

Her words, from her own mouth.

In a few weeks, and with careful attention, this place will feed Skyhold delights it cannot imagine. They'll cut their expenses in dried goods and fresh produce by at least a third, which must be a great source of pride to both Mirèio and her princesa. 

He cannot help but wonder if she'd be happier as just this: as a farmer left to the peace of her plants and her dirt. 

Perhaps he should just _ask?_

_Mirèio,_

_This is perhaps not the most amorous way to begin a letter, but I should tell you I ruined several sheaves of parchment trying to find some little name to call you that rings as **joli** does. Alas, as you can see I rather failed at that venture. It would appear that you were correct: Ferelden tongues do not move quite so finely as northern Marcher tongues. As yours does. I never received complaints as to its skill, but I fear I sought too few opinions in that regard. Perhaps I might request that you provide detailed commentary as to whether or not my tongue is nimble enough for your needs upon your return?_

_I must confess I have little understanding of how to go about writing personal letters that are not meant to simply ascertain whether or not one is alive and well. I fear I am not very skilled in this aspect of communication, courtly or otherwise._

_If you are curious, it would appear that neither Fiona or any other colleagues of ours holds any notion of what occurred between us. I know you care little for the opinions of others, but I am glad for it. Whatever this is, or will be, I will not share it with anyone. Most especially those japing fools from Orlais who always lurk about in the great hall._

_Now, I must arrive at the heart of this letter._

_Please tell me if I offend you, or if you do not wish to discuss certain things in this manner. I am aware that you gave me leave to do so, but letters are distant. If I have asked too much, or shared something I should not have, I will not know til you return. I find that does not sit well with me, but I feel I have a need to tell you certain things. Things we did not have the opportunity to speak upon before you departed._

_What we spoke of over morning meal, I find myself dwelling upon it too much. I fear I did not react well, or did not react enough. These things are difficult. I am beginning to understand why you were so reluctant to ask me of my time in the Circles, with the Order. I wish need for you to understand that I find myself at a loss for the hurt you endured as a child. The Order does not encourage young templars to see the bringing of mage children to the Circle as something that should be questioned._

_Maker knows I did not question it, not for many years._

_At first it was because I thought mages would be safer in the Circles, that the templars could better protect them from others. I had lost hold of that perspective by the time I was transferred to Kirkwall, and it was not until after Meredith fell to the red lyrium and her own paranoia that I had an opportunity to re-examine that belief._

_The Champion came back to the Gallows and removed his sister, Lady Bethany, from what remained of the Circle. He waited just long enough for the surviving Captains and I to be too run-ragged to offer much resistance. Thinking back upon it now, I cannot help but admire the man and his cunning. That bastard planned his sister's rescue with an adept hand, and the whole affair felt very like a surgeon's blade: quick and terribly efficient._

_Lady Hawke was a kind, if not somewhat coddled girl, and her brother loved her fiercely. Varric has told me that she and her brother are all the blood kin left to House Amell. Regardless, the lady came to us a good, gentle soul._

_She left us lessened for her time with us._

_She hurt no one, lashed out at no one. She complied with the classes, learned to move as quietly as the other mages, and in all things tried her utmost to keep herself from the notice of her keepers. She was particularly good with the younger mages, and made herself their foremost protector._

_She learned her art at her father's side. And later, under her brother's watchful eye. She completed her Harrowing as if it were a bit of dust flicked off her robes, and certainly did not learn that iron centre from us, from the Circle._

_We made her small and frightened. And I could not see it. Could not understand why. Not until Hawke returned, and Lady Bethany knew her freedom was at hand._

_If we, if the Templars had harmed that girl enough that she ran to her brother as if her very soul depended on her escape, what other harm had we done? How many other mages came to us as bright, good children, and then learned fear at our hands? Too many I think._

_It makes me sick to think of you there. To wonder who you might have been, if you had been caught. I cannot imagine such a thing._

_And to know that you suffered from that same fear, even in your freedom, is abominable to me._

_Please understand, I do not ask out of simple curiosity. Nothing so neat as that. I ask of your past, your life beyond the Inquisition, because your perspective is ~~valuable~~ important to me. The lands you have travelled to, the knowledge you have gained, the scope of your horizon – all is so vastly different from mine, that I want to know. Know you. Where you come from. Why you are who you are. _

_I may have opened my eyes, but most days I feel as if I still cannot see far enough._

_When you told me of your fear at being sent to the Circle, of being afraid of your own magic, I thought of something terrible. When those words left your mouth, I thought 'that is what the Circles are for, to teach young mages safely.' And then you rode out and I picked away at that awful thought, and I remembered Lady Bethany._

_The Circles teach fear. Or, fear of the Circles teaches fear? I cannot sort it out. And I cannot account for the anger I feel at what you shared with me. I cannot account for why I never thought to ask any of the children who were brought to the Circle. I cannot understand why we punish those mages who long for the loved ones they were torn from. Why is it such an awful thing for children to want to know their families? To know that someone cares for them?_

_~~Mages have committed terrible crimes against templars, and we against them. I think it is more like two dogs chained to the same post, both left in the cold to starve with only the other for company.~~ _

_Despite your warning that your childhood was an old hurt, I find myself focussed on that nonetheless. Old hurts. There are certain things in my past I have not yet succeeded in setting aside. Certain beliefs and opinions. I do not know if I can._

_I ask only for your patience._

_You should know I have written and then re-written this letter a dozen times, kept my office heated with a further dozen I fed into the fireplace in irritation. This is entirely too ~~intimate much honest painful~~ honest. But I cannot seem to write anything but this. I cannot account for it, save that you should know these things, and that it is perhaps easier for me to speak of these things to you like this. I would have us be honest with one another, even if it is not pleasant. _

_Mirèio, I pray this does not dissuade you._

_I hope the hunter is not turned from her pursuit._

_Despite the ugliness of this letter, I desire for you to know I have thought of little else but you._

_Your hands. Your mouth. Your teeth._

_The air in the greenhouse **tastes** like you, Mirèio._

_Do not tarry._

_Yours,_

_Cullen_

_One last thing, Mirèio: I went to Maryden. Asked her if she'd any knowledge of the verse you left me. She called it an alba, and was kind enough to point me in the right direction._

Dieus que fetz tot quant ve ni vay  
_Maker, who created all that comes and goes_  
E formet sest'amor de lonh  
_and shaped this faraway love,_  
Mi don poder, que cor be n'ai,  
_give me strength, since I already have the intention_ ,  
Qu'ieu veya sest'amor de lonh,  
_so that I see this love far away_  
Verayamen en luec aizis,  
_in reality and in a fitting place_  
Si que las cambras e'l jardis  
_so that her rooms and gardens_ – I believe this is gardens  
Mi resemblo novels palatz.  
_shall seem to me to be new palaces_  
Palace? New palaces? This root is curious, it makes more sense in Tevene

~ * ~

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My enjoyment of very old poetry strikes again, this time from Jaufre Rudel's Lanquan li jorn son lonc e may. 
> 
> If anyone wants to read the whole thing, I am particular to this translation found here: http://www.trobar.org/troubadours/


	11. As well as I may spend his time in vain.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know there are some very strong feelings attached to the Adoribull ship, so this is just me letting everyone know that Dorian is going to be talking about it a bit more, and that it is in fact part of this fic. I didn't want to tag it in the main pairings because I love Adoribull but it's not the main focus and it's not fair to stick this fic in the tags when it isn't going to be playing a huge part. 
> 
> That relationship is going to get it's own damn fic, as soon as I wrap this one up.

~ * ~

All around her is the music of the wind through the trees; the gentle, swaying chitter of leaves and the trilling of little birds; the air is cold against her teeth, and the rock beneath her is chill, the moss on its face brittle under her fingers.

Silence. 

But she feels loud, noisy. 

He's annotated the excerpt with a deft hand, substituting in the words he does not know with their Tevene roots, with Fereldan. Northern Marcher is an odd language, but he's picked it apart rather well for a man who claims no familiarity with its ways. Regardless of her opinions of the Circles, it would appear they have served his appetite for learning rather well. 

Better still, it means Cullen returned to her chambers, picked through the tomes on her shelf, and felt comfortable enough to send her back the continuation of the alba she'd left for him in the greenhouse. 

This is well beyond what she might have hoped for, all things considered. 

And yet...

Her breath is twisted up somewhere in the vicinity of her chest, lungs half-squeezed by an unwelcome misery. The letter in her hands is long, and it is _terrible_. She does not know what to do with it, with the words, with him. A week, less than a fortnight, and this is his reply?

They have been circling for months. So careful of one another. And now it is either that she cleaves to that caution, or tosses it to the wind as she would prefer. Now she must be honest and true with him even if it is hurtful. Even if that honesty will ruin what has barely begun.

“Mirèio?”

Craning her neck around, she finds him leaning against a tree, one ankle tucked over the other, staff loose in his grip. There is a question on his face, pinched neatly between his brows. 

“Ursa, you look as if you've just had sand kicked in your eyes. Surely the Commander's report isn't that terrible?”

When she does not offer a reply, he pushes on, head held high. 

“I am aware that these former templar types do not always have the greatest skill with words, but perhaps you should consider not lighting the letter on fire with your gaze?”

She folds the letter up, tucks it into the yellow sash at her waist, and buries her head in her hands.

Dorian manages to keep his composure until her knee starts to bounce.

“Andraste's tits, whatever is the matter?” She is rarely distressed. Almost never moved to open agitation. Those emotions are beyond private for her, and he's only seen her wear them a handful of times, and in the bitterest of circumstances. 

The rock she's perched on is large enough for them both, and so he scrambles up, heedless of the moss getting stuck in his finery. Settling beside her, Dorian finds the warmth of her pressed against him from hip to knee takes a little off the bright edge of alarm he's got sharpening his tongue. 

“Commander Rutherford sent a precise, very useful report on the materials we sent back to Skyhold,” is her reply, her tone as careful as the first strike of a hammer against steel. “The red templars are smuggling lyrium from a handful of sources in the region that we cannot narrow down at the moment. I've authorized him to dispatch Leliana's scouts ahead of his troops. I trust his discretion at the number of our soldiers who will be engaged in this recognizance. Samson's men are cautious, and this will take time, blood and much patience.”

“Yes.” Dorian drawls. “I gathered as much. Please do not insult me, ursa, with this noise. You did not take yourself half and hour's distance from camp to wallow in the dirt over an unpleasant report from the Commander.” The question lives in his inflection, Tevene staccato sharp in the silence.

“Cullen sent a second letter. It was not a report.”

“Oh.”

“Yes,” Mirèio snaps, “oh.”

Dorian wonders, for a very brief, very small moment, if he should leave this alone. Let her be. Keep his distance. 

_Fuck that. Absolutely and unequivocally, fuck that nonsense._

“Is it very terrible?” He murmurs, leaning in to knock their shoulders together. “I get the distinct feeling that perhaps the two of you are now, how shall I say this? A posse ad esse?”

“Ah.” Mirèio grouses, shoving at Dorian's shoulder. “You and your fucking Tevene! So full of clever little phrases.” 

Dorian's reply is a hum of approval, and the click of his tongue against his teeth. “Other than you, only Bull and Aclassi know their ass from a hole in the ground when it comes to Tevene. Who else am I going to play these little games with? If I do not get to string insults and puzzles into every conversation, I might just resort to conversing with the potted cuttings Solas keeps gifting me. Not that the elf will play along. Stubborn old wolf, that one.”

“Perhaps if you stopped mercilessly taunting him in regard to his clothing, the man might be persuaded to have a decent conversation with you?”

“Oh, and actually speak to me as if I'm not a wet-eared apprentice with his first staff?” Perish the thought,” Dorian mutters sourly.

Mirèio laughs: a quite huff of air between bitten lips. She watches Dorian's smile turn sharp, curling up like a fennec with a little bird in its mouth.

“I do notice, ursa, that you did not deny my query. Am I to understand I guessed true?” 

“Aye, that you did.” 

Dorian claps his hands together, and she curls her hands into fists to smother the impulse to shove him down from the rock. 

“This is delightful!” He chortles, merriment sparking on his face. “Why, in the name of the Maker, are you sulking then? I'm going to assume you got what you desired.”

Mirèio grins, but her mouth is pulled in strange directions, entirely too disorganized to be an honest thing.

“Please do not tell me the fool rejected you afterwards?” Dorian says with a hand round her forearm, giving her a little shake. “He worked very hard to even bother asking you, and I cannot believe he'd be so stupid as to – ”

“Cariñu,” Mirèio scoffs in a warning tone, a fist uncurling to lay it flat against her thigh, “you know I love you dearly, but this is not – this is not something I wish to discuss at the moment.”

A frown tugs at the corners of his lips, and Dorian finds one of his eyebrows curved up high: a question on the tip of his tongue. “Oh? Come now, amicus, have we not spoken at length about my little dalliance with the Bull?”

A great, noisy sigh leaves her and Mirèio shakes her head, a patchwork, poorly-felt smile on her face. “My reticence is not out of distrust, Dorian. It is. Ah, it is. 

Dorian waves his hand as if to draw her on, as if to tug her forward. 

“I – I will not disrespect him by sharing the contents of this letter, but much of what is in here is _hard_ to read.”

“Ursa,” the man laughs, smile whiter than ivory, “how are we to untangle you if you do not tell me what is wrong? I'm certain you would go to the Bull if something were the matter with me.”

“Please,” Mirèio barks, “if something were wrong with you, Dorian, I would go to you. Do you honestly believe I would not? Maker's Throne man! You are far too dear to me for that. And so is Cullen. And the Bull, though perhaps you should not tell him as much. He and I are a little too similar for comfort.”

“Mirèio,” is soft on his tongue. Tis hard to be gentle-hearted in the south. In Tevinter. Not a lot of use for it. Not much reason to cultivate it. Not much safety in being as such. But he tries. He tries with her. With the Bull. Because they are kind, and they are safe, and they are strong. Because neither of them has ever treated him like a child incapable of making and living with his own decisions. “I am not asking that you share every detail with me, but – well – I cannot help if you do not tell me what is wrong.” 

He ducks his head, hides away that unhelpful little note of hesitation on his face, and carries on. Charging forward with no care to the consequences is becoming a common occurrence the longer he spends with these odd, backwards southerners. 

Mirèio scrubs a hand down her face, rubs at the sockets of her eyes hard enough to see red when she blinks. “I would not have spent these past few months circling around Cullen if I wanted something as simple as a crude little affair in the dark. And, cariñu, I do not think the Bull would take such care with you, if you were just some pretty little thing for him to take apart.”

Dorian flushes, squawks and jams his fingers into her ribs with a retort on his tongue. “Have you and the Bull been discussing me after all?”

“Hardly.” There is no give in the sharp point of her denial. “As I said before, I would not disrespect you so, but, ah,” and there is laughter behind her eyes, in the twitch of her fingers against the leather on her thighs, “you and Cullen are more similar than either of you suspect. The Bull and I are two sides of the same coin. His methods may be different than mine, but our preferences for bedmates are _eerily_ similar. Though I will admit, I usually prefer women.”

“Andraste's flaming tits!” Dorian howls, burying his face in his palms. “Did you just?” He glares at his dearest friend through his fingers, mouth as crooked as hers. “I. No. I do not what to know how you came to that conclusion. Not right now. We are discussing you. Stop this senseless deflecting and talk to me, dearest. Do me the courtesy of letting me aid you, as you have aided me.” 

“If it were that simple, I would. But I cannot. Cullen has, he has pushed himself over heights I cannot imagine. His struggles are so different from mine. I will neither betray nor compromise his confidence. This letter is an ugly thing, but not all of it is so. And it is not so terrible that I...”

He tucks his shoulder down, and her head comes to rest on the thick padding of his robes; she smells much the same as always, except there's a bit of road-dust layered over all her brighter notes, and her braids aren't quite as neat as usual. This is proving a hard lesson for him: how to ask for and give affection that bears no strings, no underhanded promises of reward or influence or other, more sinister things. He wants this from the Bull, from her, from Cullen, from friend and lover alike.

“Mirèio,” Dorian begins, fighting with the grin he feels pricking at the corners of his lips. “I think this is one occasion wherein you would better serve yourself if you would stop being a bloody-minded bear.”

Her only reply is a snort, and then her hand uncurls, unfolds to rest between them with fingers splayed and gloved palm up.

“Just,” she murmurs, tight as a wire and twice as sharp, “just sit with me and let me be a little while longer. Please, cariñu.”

Dorian laughs, a quick, bitter exhale, and slots his fingers neatly between hers.

The Wilds roar and sigh around them, wind-raked grass and trees burring and scraping and rustling under the unseen weight of the Maker's hand. Her boots tap out an odd, hollow sounding rhythm, and Dorian's little silver embellishments tinkle sweetly under the directionless shifting of his frame. 

Dorian finds himself humming an old song: one that glides and tumbles and leaps like salt-spume and seaweed, burns like the white coasts of eastern Tevinter. Like the summer home he misses so fiercely it is a physical hurt to stand in her garden and smell the tangled herbs that he remembers growing to wild profusion along the stone pathway that snaked down to the ocean he savoured and the heat he still longs to feel.

He sings and she softens by inches, the thorns falling away as her breathing evens out into that familiar, steady drag that speaks of contentedness. 

“Is he as beautiful in bed as you'd hoped he'd be?”

“Yes.” And then she chokes, Dorian's even, steady Tevene lulling her into an idle, directionless comfort. Comfort enough to loosen her tongue too far. “You little fox! That was most impertinent.”

“I but ask your indulgence in this matter, dearest.” Dorian chimes, laughter turning silver-bright, taking the sting from the moisture at the corners of his vision. “If we dance around such terribly serious matters for much longer, I'm going to fall off this rock. It's exhausting. I'll never have a firm hand on all this being honest with one another. Not like you.”

“I worked very hard for that firmness, you know,” she quips, squeezing his hand tight. “And in all truth, Altus Dorian Pavus of the High House of Minrathous, Enchanter of the Circle of Vyrantium, you have acquitted yourself admirably when it comes to _honesty_.”

He finds himself laughing against the dark seam of her hair, laughing hard enough that it echoes through her body; the shiver of their breath mists in the chill air and he puffs up, puffs out, and settles.

“Can you blame me for being curious? That man is quite possibly one of the prettiest I've ever clapped eyes on. Must be that rough Ferelden snarl of his,” Dorian clicks his tongue against his teeth, appreciation in the curl of his mouth, “and those cheekbones.”

“Please.” Mirèio hums, bringing up her free hand to wave her fingers under Dorian's nose. “Thighs, waist, hands, shoulders. I've put my head between enough legs to know when I've found something exceptional.”

“What kind of noise does he make?”

“Dorian!”

“Ursa!” The man trills back, with a voice that is merry and bright and too full of a great many unmarked things. “Bull is forever telling me how important the noises we make are, how much they tell a lover. Are they as fine as I think they'd be?”

“Andraste deliver me from this indignity,” Mirèio sighs with a snap, shaking Dorian's hand in hers, “you are as much of a deviant as I am, aren't you?”

“Absolutely.”

“Fie! As you wish.” She glances up at him and his lovely face is bright, delighted, pleased for her and for himself. She should not indulge him in this manner, but there has been so much shared between them already. A little more is nothing but another drop in an overfull cup. 

“You know that moment when you touch a certain part that you suspect might be particularly arousing to your partner? The inside of a knee, the soft strip of skin on the inner thigh, or the back of the ear?” 

Dorian nods, a little heat tinting his cheeks. The first time the Bull had put his hands between Dorian's thighs and he had realized how _big_ the qunari's fingers were he'd nearly lit the curtains aflame in excitement. Those thick, slate-grey fingers curled gentle as silk against his darker skin had been the finest, most cutting lance of _want_ he'd ever known. Desire. True, honest, naked desire. No shame. No hesitation. Just honest, open, welcoming need. All for him. Just for him.

“And it earns you a noise, like you've shot them through with an arrow and they won't recover if you do _that_ again? I got that out of him, and, hand to the Maker's Throne, I'll never hear finer music than that, ever again.”

The grin on her mouth is red and white and prideful; so fierce and wolfish it's sharp enough to cut her cheeks. “But I would wager the Bull makes you scream, doesn't he?”

And then she's tumbling off the rock, moss and dirt catching in the seams of her armour, a thunderous crack of laughter shaking out of her lungs. Sunlight blinds her, and the world spins green and blue and white. The earth calls to her, its song in her blood and under her skin. 

Nothing is easy. Nothing is ever meant to be easy, but even in the face of this choice, under the hand of his letter, her world is as it has always been. Still the song, and the words, and the earth.

Still herself. Still her choices. Still his. As long as that remains, as long as that stands, so can she. So can he.

Dorian slips off, dusts his palms together and slings a hand out to the woman sprawled in the dirt.

“Better?”

“For now,” Mirèio replies, grabbing hold of the hand thrust under her nose. As he hefts her up, she murmurs: “What would I do without you, Master Pavus?”

Dorian smiles, a rough, hastily built thing that settles on his face in strange places, and says: “Maker willing, neither one of us will ever discover the answer.”

~ * ~

_Joli,_

_I will not beat about the bush with you: that was a hard letter to read. I am glad you wrote it, glad that you made the choice to share. Please know that whatever you wish to speak of, no matter how you might worry it will hurt, I will listen. And, above all else, I will endeavour to understand._

_I know it must be beyond hard for you to discuss your time in Kirkwall – like dredging up a thing you'd thought well and truly buried. I wish you did not feel as if you had to do this, but in the same breath I understand why you are doing this. I understand why you are insisting that I know these things about you, despite their distance from who you are now._

_I have never considered the Circles from the perspective of a templar. Never. By dint of my nature, I was taught very little of my House's traditions in regards to the Chantry. I know we have not discussed faith, or the Chantry, but you will forgive me if I think I have made myself clear as to how little respect I hold for Val Royeaux and its teachings – for all the strictures and beliefs that have so shaped my life in less than pleasant ways. No doubt we will be as like two rams fighting over the same patch of grass in this regard. I look forward to the challenge._

_What I know of the Circles is what I saw from the outside. Ostwick was a ruin. A terrible place much like Kirkwall. Starkhaven was rather neutral, but there were whispers. Tantervale kept itself above the conflict for a long time, and eventually simply opened the doors to its mages, rather than risk the city falling into chaos. I heard the Prince in Starkhaven was rather unsupportive of Teryn Gaerwyhs and his decision to release the mages. Good thing no Marcher in their right mind gives a sodding half-sovereign what other Marchers think of their conduct._

_Thank you for telling me about Lady Bethany. Varric's book left much of that out. Do you know if she is well? Though I suppose the Champion and his family are less than willing to be found by anyone who goes about Thedas under the banners of the Chantry._

_Joli, I wish I had better answers for you. Any answers for you. Mages and templars are forced to live together, bound by the Chantry and unable to voice their dissent. Magic is feared. Hated. Misunderstood. And by the nature of what we are, so are mages. To many, we are not people. We are beasts, demons. A spirit healer in a little cottage is no different in the eyes of a templar, in the eyes of the Chantry, than a blood-mage in Tevinter. No different than the Seers of Rivain with their heretical, profane teachings about spirits and demons and the great One, the All and the Universe._

_I have worked hard, for much of my life, to rid myself of the fear that poisons most mages: the fear of myself, of what I am and what I am capable of when pressed. I still fear what other's think of me. I worry over how that will touch me, how that may hurt either myself or my family, but there is no shame in me for what I am. None. Not for many years._

_I swear to you, I have been patched up and set on my feet as well as I can be. If you wish to know more, I will tell you, but do not think I still hurt, or that your questions will be a hard request to fulfill. If you want my history, it is yours. Whatever you wish to know. I will tell you of Rivain. Of Antiva. Of Ostwick and Montjüic. I will even tell you of my bed, of who has shared it, and what I know of pleasure._

_I do not know if you intended, or were searching for an answer as to why you never thought to ask any of the charges in your care certain questions. I would try to give you an answer, Cullen, but every time I write it out I think it is a conversation we would both be better served to have in person, and not through a letter._

_However, I think I can provide a little insight into the Lady Bethany, and why she ran from the Circle. I suspect her reasons stand on the same foundations as my own._

_Before I left I was angry, not about the lesson plans themselves but about how odd it is for me to stand in the company of Circle mages and see, daily, the difference between myself, between hedge-mages, and those taught under the orderly hand of the Chantry._

_Like Bethany, I had my family for my protectors. My family closed round me and made me strong. Set me true. Nothing of who I am, of what I am capable of, is from myself alone. I am because they made me thus. They held me fast and raised my walls, built my foundations. Gave me strength and purpose and a will as hard and unrelenting as my life required it to be. I am strong and sure because they made me so, not because I faced a demon alone in a tower with a sword at my throat._

_I am unshakeable because I have something to protect other than just myself. A family to love, a home to cherish, a life to live. I have horizons, futures, chances. I have something to defend to the last miserable breath in my body. I have always had that._

_Just as Lady Bethany did._

_She had a family. A life. A home. A brother who loved her. That is why she ran. I suspect she wanted that back, because that is what made her strong. Made her sure._

_If there is nothing to fight for, nothing to cherish, nothing to love, what purpose is there in resistance? Why ignore the whispers if there is no horizon to crawl towards? If there is no future in which you will know love, or peace, or your own fucking nameday – why fight?_

_Perhaps if we taught mage children to see themselves as defenders and protectors and healers, things would be different? Perhaps if we taught the same to the families they came from, it might be better. Perhaps if the Chantry stopped spewing forth that tired old blame, stopped insisting that magic is corruption waiting to happen, the fear would lie so thick on the ground._

_I will not deny the pain that mages have caused. I will not turn away from the crimes committed against innocents. I say only that it is not magic that has done the harm, it is the people who choose those actions, who make it their cause to spread chaos and destruction. Terrible people will do terrible things regardless of whether they carry a sword, a staff or a seal of noble title. It is only the scale of the hurt that is different._

_History, the Chantry, the Order, will not allow us to separate the magic from the person. And so we do not see people. Only ruin waiting to happen. So we see fear. Know fear. Choose it over understanding because it is easier to be afraid than anything else._

_This letter has turned rather awful and I hate it very much._

_I do not want to send this to you._

_There is nothing in me that desires for you to read this, but that is crass and disrespectful of me. You've been clear with me in the matter of this subject, and I will endeavour to meet you with the same honesty._

_Please, Cullen, do not believe that anything I have written must somehow change your mind. I do not want you to think I am forcing this down your throat. I am not here to bully you, or any one else, into seeing my perspective, for if I demand that of you, of anyone, it is not genuine, it is not a choice. It is not real, and no one has truly learned anything. You are as you are. I am as I am. If we can meet in the middle, if we can continue to meet at all, as we have already done, that will be a holy miracle the likes of which Thedas has never seen._

_So, in the effort of enforcing our little agreement, let me tell you about the first time I may or may not have picked a fight in a tavern._

_The Blight had ended a year prior to this, and Arnau and I were in Sidannar – a busy port town in Rivain, and the origin point of many of the summer long caravans that tracked through Antiva and Nevarra – and I was rather irritated. Arnau less so. Nevertheless, we had just sealed contracts to import murex in exchange for a portion of title to the products of our second best herd, and a third of the trade income of our crafts deal with the Nevarran guild of Gelyedes. Murex is a treasure that Rivaini dyemakers do not part with easily. A patron of the mercantile establishment took a disliking to the fact that two barbaric, most likely illiterate, jumped up southerners had successfully bartered for that honour. It hardly mattered that we were there not under House Trevelyan's banners, but as members of House Tolivara._

_I may or may not have drunk enough ale to poison a small herd of nuggalope, and I may or may not have spoken poorly of the man's mother, and his father, and his uncles and cousins and so on down the line to the bronto humping, shite swilling dirt grubbing ancestor that spawned him. Arnau may or may not have failed to knock me in the ribs fast enough to shut my mouth._

_I may or may not have turned the offensive man's wine into snakes._

_Mitigating factors aside, I certainly did not throw the first punch, but I assure you I threw the last. We scuffled, and I distinctly remember having my face mashed into the loveliest tiles imported from Dairsimuid, as the man had broken a bottle over my head. It took me a week to wash the blood out of my hair. No one told me head wounds bleed as if you're liable to die. How was I supposed to know?_

_I broke the man's nose on my knuckles and he went down like a sack of wet clay._

_A qunari dragged us out by our collars, and three days later we met again. Turns out she was one of the vashoth hired to guard the caravan we'd joined. That was an excellent summer. Very profitable. Learned a great deal. The vashoth's name was Hamat and she was the most thorough lover I've ever had. She met me inch for inch, never gave ground, never offered anything less than an absolute challenge. She also had the most gentle hands. Magnificent woman. Once, she fucked me so well I blacked out during climax. No one's ever managed that again._

_Now you know why I hate ale._

_In the hopes of a swiftly passing fortnight, I remain eagerly yours,  
Mirèio_

_Can vei la lauzeta mover_  
De joi sas alas contral rai,  
Que s'oblid' e.s laissa chazer  
Per la doussor c'al cor li vai,  
Ai tan grans enveya m'en ve  
De cui qu'eu veya jauzion,  
Meravilhas ai, car desse  
Lo cor de dezirer no.m fon 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, I finally managed to scare off a few readers in the bookmarks, lol. Yay for me!  
> Sorry guys, I know this is slow going, but I really appreciate all the lovely comments and such, regardless of how many of you there are.
> 
> Canso used is Bernart de Ventadorn's Can vei la lauzeta mover.


	12. And graven with diamonds

~ * ~

The raspberries in the little clay bowl mock him, and their sweetness turns to ash in his mouth. 

He has to read the letter again. 

Every word.

Above all else, he needs to _understand._

He has never had anyone care for his well-being who has not been his mother or his father or his siblings. He has never had someone to share his thoughts with, both good and terrible. Never had someone share theirs. He has not sought out a debate on the nature of magic, or on the justness of the Circles in more than a decade. 

Oh, the Champion had picked at him hard enough to draw blood, sneered and belittled and bit back like a mabari after its bloodied prey. But Hawke hadn't been interested in reasonable discourse. Hawke had wanted his sister back, his lover safe, his home restored and his friends whole and well and far from the hand of the Gallows – far from Meredith's shadow. 

And now there is someone in his life who is not afraid to dole out ugly words and challenging thoughts. Someone who will listen, give him the space to explain himself, and return to him her genuine opinion. 

It matters than she is a mage, and yet it does not. 

He does not care. 

Cullen simply wants her to return. 

Everything else will sort itself out. They will sort it out, together. He must believe this. Cling to it, build his walls around it, push it into the dirt of his mind in the mad hope that something will finally, finally grow there in the place where his fear had rooted deep. 

There is so much in this letter. So much. 

So much of it is awful, full of pain and sorrow. Full of words that cut and muddle and make him sorry, make him sharp and uncertain. He'd asked her, again and again, not to be careful, not to treat him like glass. And she has done as he asked. 

It hurts and he is glad for it, so glad, because mixed in all this misery is a thread of humour, a thread of good, clean memory. 

So much good. 

She writes as if she were speaking to him: her red mouth at his ear and her hands on his arms; the rough, honey'd burr of her voice rushing over his skin, cares and joys shared out. And oh how vast is her wealth, oh how bright and strange. 

He's never been to Sidannar. Kirkwall is as far as he got before grasping on to Cassandra's outstretched hand. Before answering her summons. 

The sea makes him sick, but he cannot help but wonder what it would be like to cross it with her, to go out against the sprawling blue until the horizon bleeds into the roil of waves – all while knowing that something better, something wildly unknown waits over the impossibly vast distance.

_I desire to speak to you now, Mirèio. Not on the morrow, or a week's distance from now. Not in a month. Now. You will return as swiftly as circumstances allow._

Once, in another life, he used to debate the harshness of the Circle with the other young templars he served with in Ferelden. His friends. 

Once.

In another life.

In that life, Kinloch had been slow days and quiet evenings; warm summers and bitter winters that had the littler mages racing around in the snow; Kinloch had been shrieks of laughter and the quiet, patient smiles of the older enchanters and templars trusted with their care. 

Kinloch had been lauds in the chapel as the blue bite of early morning receded into rosy dawn; vespers on bent knee as the sun tumbled down between the arrow slits and the stones, compline as the stars rose, and the mages gathered for evening lessons in the courtyard. 

Order and peace and stillness. 

Patience and openness. 

All good, bright things that he had unflinchingly, unreservedly pledged himself to with no shadow of a doubt in his mind. 

And Uldred had sullied it.

Worse, oh worse is that it remained sullied. That he had made no attempt to repair the damage. That by his own hand he'd allowed that wound to fester, to bite, to twist and mar and poison. Rob him. Blind him. Sharpen him against those he'd wanted to protect, to defend, to shelter. 

Greenfell had at least helped him settle the rage, the choking terror that clouded his mind and made him jump at the shadows, but not even the sisters there could divest him of every ugly thing he'd carried with him to that peaceful, green-soaked chantry. No one could. For no better reason than he had no tools to let it go, no means to divest himself. No cause. No strength. No safety to flee towards, to crawl into and shake until there was something better to cram into the red valleys left by the demons and their tricks.

It is so much easier, so much neater and simpler to forget. To look away. Turn inwards. Blame others. Push burdens and responsibilities and reasons onto shoulders that had become inured to the weight of impossible things. To allow his Knight-Commander to guide him, mould him, sharpen him. To let her take upon herself, and herself alone, the responsibility of ensuring their chargers were safe, rather than look deeper, ask questions, demand answers. 

Always, always it is easier to look away.

Meredith gave him the stone, gave him the blindfold and the reason to hide behind it with steadfast determination. Given him the tools to undo Greagoir and Irving and bold, determined Surana. 

Meredith gave him the means to lose his hold on the first and foremost truth in all the Chant and its verses, in all the world as it had been fashioned by the Maker Himself: all lives are worthy in the eyes of the Maker. All lives are precious beyond measure. All lives are made as the Maker wills them to be. 

And Cullen had allowed himself to forget. He'd forgotten, forgotten until he'd watched Bethany stumble and claw her way from the rubble of the Gallows with tears on her face, calling for her brother like a wounded animal racing headlong towards its last hope for escape. 

Sweet, coddled, iron-centred Bethany had run and he remembered: 

Always, there is farther to climb.

Always: a better Knight, a better man, a better friend.

A better lover?

Her name flows onto the parchment, though his hands shake and his letters curve too sharply.

He starts with the canso, with the remainder of the poem she'd returned to him, and the rest unfurls from there, from the lark and its sun-struck wings. 

There is so much farther to climb. 

~ * ~

The weeks pass, and she does not return, her time away lengthening with every little encampment discovered, every waylaid shipment disrupted, every nest of red lyrium destroyed. The unquiet things lurking in the marginalia of her letters feel much like claws upon the back of his neck, the whole ugly picture unspooling before his eyes in a manner that leaves no room for softness or certainty.

He watches his soldiers carefully, watches the former templars in his ranks when they return from rotation in the camps nearest the lyrium. Watches the path leading to the mage quarters, determined to ensure Mirèio returns and does not have to read reports of his former templars straying into the classes and outdoor lessons they have never been welcome to observe, never mind permitted to oversee. 

Peace between their mages and the ex-templars has endured for months now, ever since the Breach was closed, but there are days wherein the anxious grumbling in his own barracks is not to his liking. For some, it is hard to forget that their brothers and sisters would not be so twisted had the Inquisitor not chosen to go to Redcliffe. 

The first time he heard such mutterings, he'd run the dogs who'd uttered such nonsense ragged, sends half to rebuild bridges and half to aid the refugees fleeing from the encroaching Venatori forces.

_Our purpose here is to aid the citizens, the people, not sit about bemoaning the decisions of Andraste's Chosen. If I hear such talk again, I will turn the next ignorant fool out of Skyhold, and that fool may go begging for shelter elsewhere._

His soldiers learned to keep their tongues behind their teeth right quick. 

When he is not consumed by the task at hand, he allows himself an indulgence, just one: spending some portion of the evening in her quiet, echoing chambers. 

One single, solitary indulgence that is his alone.

And so, by the end of the fourth week, he finds himself standing in those chambers, standing between her bed and the little, open door of the water-closet. 

Mirèio has been gone long enough that her scent has started to fade from the rooms, the blank cold of stone replacing the sharp burst of orange and bitter herbs. He knows that she has given him leave to explore, practically commanded it of him, and he wants to be ready when she returns. 

Despite the rawness of their early letters, the ones they have been exchanging are now turned firmly to teasing, to her exploits and his. Frustratingly enough, he finds he had guessed true: his own experiences are laughably small when placed alongside hers, but she had rather enjoyed the story of how he'd been chased to distraction by an overeager young lad perhaps five summers his junior. The boy had been so earnest, so eager and quick to laugh. Cullen had enjoyed his time with the lieutenant, but the Circles were not places to lay down with soft things, and soon enough lad had been transferred and that was the end of that. 

She letters had curved sharply, as if she'd been laughing while writing; called him a pretty thing anyone would have been well satisfied to chase after, and then asked if the young man had been Ferelden too, if he'd laid down for the lad, or if the lad had laid down for him, or if they'd tossed a coin.

She has no shame. None. Not a scrap of it. 

She'd told him to go looking.

She is not here. 

And yet she is.

Pushing away the heat in his cheeks, Cullen bullies himself over to the little table, and picks up the smallest, most ornate bottle in his big hand. Pulling the delicate stopper out, he lets two drops fall onto his palm. He nestles the bottle back with its brethren and rubs his hands together, slips on his gloves with that same heat still clinging stubbornly to his face. 

Returning to the neat shelves of her library, he hunts for the book she directed him to and falls gracelessly into the high-backed chair. The spine is well worn, the gold lettering faded against the oddly patterned red binding. 

He opens the book at random and must bite the inside of his cheek to stifle a sudden, noisy groan. Why he bothers is a bit of a mystery, as there is no one around to hear him. If he so desired, he could strip nude and pass the night in her bed, and no page would disturb him come the morning. 

_Oh._

The thought is wicked, and oh so inappropriate. The thought sends heat straight to his groin, his cock twitching between his legs. 

It is an easy thing to imagine: stretched out against the cold of her sheets, the yellow coverlet tangled in his legs, her bear and hart nipping at his ankles. His hands on his cock and her oil slicking his fingers, the burn of oranges and bitter herbs making his breath drip from his open mouth. The salt of his own scent left on her sheets, her pillows. 

To have her come back and find her bed decorated as if they'd never left it.

It is so easy to imagine.

And much, much too far. 

Cullen drags his attention back to the book in his lap, ignores the twinge in his belly and the sweat on his palms. 

_Bloody fool,_ he snaps at himself, _you want her to touch you, not touch yourself and moan about how unsatisfying that is now. Focus, man, and be ready when she returns._

The book is _obscene_ , but he reads until the candle is a stub and the moon is strung high between Skyhold's white towers.

He reads, and he plans.

~ * ~

“Commander?” Josephine startles, the scratching of her quill halting over the parchment. “To what do I owe the pleasure of your company? Is something the matter? Or perhaps it is that little coterie of Orlesian chevaliers you would like me to shoo out of your training yard?”

“Please,” Cullen laughs, ruthlessly crushing the nervous flutter in his chest. “Nothing quite so dramatic.” 

He reminds himself: _If you can ask the Bear of Ostwick to fuck you senseless, you can ask Josephine for this_.

“Pity,” the ambassador replies with a little grin, “sometimes it is so dull in this office, and no one but Leliana, Madame De Fer, and Mirèio ever accept my invitations to tea.”

Cullen huffs, lips curling up into a grin. “My lady, I assure you, a soldier with mud on his boots does not provide the best conversation.” All the porcelain cups and their little, lace-fine saucers feel too obscenely fragile in his big, rough hands, and Josephine seems to have nothing else in her cabinets save tiny, finely crafted art pieces masquerading as functional tableware.

Josephine's eyes narrow sharply, and her lips thin out with all the subtlety of a thread pulled flat. “And if I promised to serve you that mint and honey tea you enjoy so much?”

“What?” He coughs, hand flying up to rub at the back of his neck. “I haven't the faintest thought as to where you might have gotten that idea.” Maker's fucking breath, what does this woman not know?

“Commander, she is my friend. As are you. Your secret is safe.”

The crystal grace behind Josephine's head chimes softly, and the narrow vase at her elbow responds, the faint music of the flowers filling in the silence.

Clearing his throat, Cullen gives her a stiff bow and a murmured _thank you_.

“Good.”

“Now,” the Antivan woman grins, “what were you actually here to do, Cullen?”

“Well.” He fidgets for a moment, gloved fingers twitching against the pommel of his sword. “I recalled that our time to prepare for that ridiculous fete the Empress is hosting is dwindling rather rapidly and I – ”

Josephine is out of her chair in a flash of rustling silks and softly tinkling finery before he can finish his thought, her high, silver-bell laughter ringing out as she claps her hands together in delight.

“Am I to understand you are taking me up on my offer?” The words leave her in a rush, and she knows she's smiling much to widely for proper decorum, but there's not a bone in her body that gives a copper for that right now. Cullen is a good man, and Mirèio is a friend well beyond what she could have expected to have from joining this mad venture at Cassandra's behest.

She wants to help them, both of them, and it will be good to have this little distraction before plunging deeper into the fray, into the spider's nest that is Orlais, and the Game, and all its antecedent webs.

Besides, a man as fine as this one should know how to dance.

“Andraste guide me,” she hears the man in question mutter, pink to his ears and frowning with no little portion of sourness on his face, “is this really so important? It's not as if you are attempting to teach me flanking formations, or sortie tactics, Lady Ambassador.”

“Where we are going, Commander, it is _everything_.”

~ * ~

After the sixth week passes, the Inquisitor sends back a chevalier by the name of Michel de Chevin, and Cullen spends the introduction frowning at the man, at the boy, and wondering why that name sounds so familiar. Why the whole affair makes Leliana stiff with outrage, though she hides it well enough to pass for boredom. 

After the sixth week passes, it becomes harder to sleep, and he feels himself slipping further and further into an ugly cycle of wracking tremors and biting nausea. Perhaps what has pushed him over the edge is the now daily news of Samson's lieutenants, the raids on the camps and the missives filled with dark, abominable words that tell him of her suspicion that innocents are being used to grow the tainted lyrium. Perhaps it is the tally he has begun in his head: the one that tells him of the sheer scope of the Inquisition's resources that will be required to stamp out the red poison at its source. 

This must be done, but it leaves him too full of rage, too full of regret and bitterness and ugly, vicious thoughts he cannot, will not, divulge to her. To anyone. Not even Casandra, who has now fallen into the habit of watching him like a hawk, eyes trained on his gait and the slump of his shoulders.

He appreciates her concern, but it pushes fiercely against his greater need for privacy, for solitude.

The yard is always loud now, and he is always sharp. Always on the edge of nausea. Fights with the ache in the meat of his flesh and reminds himself that this is not the worst of it, that there is worse to come. This is only his body stripping the lyrium from his organs, from his liver and his kidneys and the scant fat he has left to him. 

He still writes her letters, sends them on to her with that raven he's come to prefer above the others, the one with the single whtie feather on its breast, and she replies all the same. They don't speak of hard things, only soft. 

She tells him stories, tells him of her first trip to Antiva, of her first day riding in the line of a great caravan, and of the strange music of the sand dunes at night. Tells him of the heat and how the sun is like a hammer, and how it strikes down on you as if you are the steel between it and an anvil, how each blow leaves you ringing under its force. She tells him of Dairsmuid, Sidannar, Afsanna, Lomeryn. Ayesleigh and Rialto Bay. Writes of all the strange songs she's learned; all the strange, wonderful people she's met. Busy markets, wide horizons, and her cousin's repeated inability to bully her into keeping her mouth shut. 

He tells her of Honnleath. Of summer festivals and autumn harvests, of spending all day with his sisters chaining flowers together to drape over the ugly statue in the village square. Of getting pushed into rivers and stuck in trees, his younger brother shrieking in delight as Mia pried him out of the copse of pine he'd gotten his hair tangled in, sap so thick his mother had had to cut it out with her sewing shears. Tells her of the merciless teasing that followed his mother's impromptu and rather ugly attempt at rescuing his curls. Writes of learning to tend the horses his father kept for their farming, and how his brother was always the one who managed to fall off them, and he the one who had to drag the lad home, the horse trailing after the pair with a haughty, self-satisfied gleam in its eyes. He tells her of the first time he'd attended for lauds in the chapel as an initiate, and his first journey to the White Spire. Thing left unspoiled by blood and terror; things left untouched by sharp teeth and high horns.

He chooses the same bird, and waits for the right hour: any reply he might send to her has to be meticulously planned, down to the last little note of punctuation. His hands shake too badly as the day wears on, and he does not trust himself to be able to write to her without revealing to her his struggles. 

That she knows of the lyrium is enough; she does not need to see just how much it cuts out of his hide, how deeply it bites, gouges, wounds. No doubt the sight of his capable penmanship turned to haphazard, messy scrawling would cause her concern. 

Mirèio is many things, but she is not a nursemaid, and he neither needs nor desires for her to be that for him. 

Even in the darkest hours, in the depths, his nightmares never wear her face. No one comes to him wearing her shape. Speaking in her voice. She does not sit on his chest and press her claws behind his ears, does not sing to him of all that he cannot have, should not desire, will never be free of, never bury. 

Cullen keeps Mirèio firmly under the waking sun, draws thick lines between the nights and days, walks between them with a determination that would be admirable, if not for the root cause; she is not a crutch. Not an excuse. Not an icon to hold up against the tide of his memories and his fears. She is not to be used in such a manner; he will not use her in such a manner. 

He does not need her help, he _wants_ it, and there is all the world of difference between the two. 

In all honesty, this is a trifle he can endure. 

It is what he knows is coming that frightens him the most.

The healers in the mendicant hospital were very clear with him: once his body is forced to hunt deeper, once the need reaches beyond his organs, nausea and a constant ache behind his eyes will be nothing. Will seem pleasant. Once his need starts pulling the mineral out of his bones, that will be his test. That will break him, or see him mad, or see him whole. 

If he does not distract himself with her letters, with the certainty of his own schedule and the mind-numbing, apparatus like whirring of the Inquisition, it would be all too easy to surrender. 

Halamshiral is fast approaching. 

Josephine's daily summons to her office helps greatly, as does the tea she makes him and the sweet Orlesian pastries she forces down his throat with an alarming constancy. Cassandra's quiet, uncomplicated silence in the training yard from the hour of four til the evening meal is a balm he has no tongue to speak his thanks to her for, and he knows she does not want something so frail as that in the expenditure of her duty, and her care towards him.

And he has work to do. 

_I will not be weak when she returns._

_I will not._

He wants and he will have, and this hunger that does not belong to him, that he wishes would not touch him so deeply, will not ruin his wanting or his pleasure or hers. 

_I will not allow it. Lyrium will not have that much of me. Lyrium will not have anything. No more._

No more.

~ * ~

The air is salt-heavy and unpleasant: fish guts, rotted vegetables, and the leavings from tanner's district not four blocks from the pier all running under the detritus of the trade ships heaving in and out of the port. 

He closes his eyes and the flap of sail cloth and the clamour of the bartering and wheedling merchants clustered round the opening market serve to push out the dreadfully dull supply reports he's got rustling on his knee. 

A heavy hand claps down on his shoulder and another passes him a little vial. 

The seal comes away under the press of his thumbnail and he knocks it back without thinking.

“See, Knight-Captain, not so hard after all. Down the hatch, just like a good little templar.”

And then Samson is thumping down onto the bench, legs kicked out wide and hands dangling between his knees. 

“Just like the rest of us, eh? Chantry don't let none of us go. That's how it is. Thought a smart man like you would understand that by now.”

And then he's gagging, reports scattering across the stones and the song in his veins alight with a fire he's never known: drowning in red red red. 

A shadow falls over him and a hand curls around his mouth, presses over his nose.

“Swallow it down, Knight-Captain. There's a good lad. It'll pass, this noisy singing, and then it'll be quiet. You'll be quiet. Isn't that what you want? To be quiet. To forget.” 

The stones are cold. Cold. And he's burning, burning.

The mage-girl laughs, high and fine as a little blade.

_Oh Maker._

“Don't you know by now?” Samson laughs, giving his shoulder a comforting shake. “Ain't no way out, lad. Ain't no life beyond this. No better day.”

_Oh Maker, hear my cry._

Samson's hand falls away and Cullen sticks his fingers down his throat, heaves red onto the reports and the stones; spits red down his chin, onto the black runnel of Andraste's flaming sword, down his chest. 

On the wind, under the rattle of hawsers and the boom of sailcloth unfurling, there is the snap of her white, white teeth clacking together, mouth pulled wide and red. Her little, bare feet are standing in the growing pool of corruption, and he chokes, seizes up, vision blurring.

Chokes and chokes and he cannot get it out. 

Fire under his skin and in his throat and on his tongue. 

Fire in his bones. 

Salt on his cheeks.

No.

_No._

“No!”

He jolts and the world comes roaring back, strikes him over the head with its silence, with the cold of the Frostbacks and the snow falling gently through the hole above his ceiling.

_My Maker, know my heart_  
Take from me a life of sorrow  
Lift me from a world of pain  
Judge me worthy of Your endless pride 

His fingers knot in his hair and he tugs until it stings, fights with the bile in his throat and the rage in his chest. He wipes the tears off his face, pushes his palms against his neck until he is sure there is nothing growing under his skin. 

No red. 

No song. 

No taint. 

His sheets are soaked in sweat; he's shivering and his fingers jam clumsily together when he heaves himself up off the bed. His legs feel shattered and he fumbles for his clothing, for his boots. 

_My Creator, judge me whole:_  
Find me well within Your grace  
Touch me with fire that I be cleansed  
Tell me I have sung to Your approval 

The hour is late, the moon is high and thin and sickle-curve bright in the sky. And he's too full of teeth, too full of fear, too full of Samson's merry laughter and his bitter, bitter voice.

There is no hope for sleep. Not tonight. 

He won't stay here, he has to go, get out and away. Put as much distance between himself and the echo of his own terror as he possibly can.

_O Maker, hear my cry:_  
Seat me by Your side in death  
Make me one within Your glory  
And let the world once more see Your favour 

_For You are the fire at the heart of the world  
And comfort is only Yours to give._

He marches, stiff and ram-rod straight as he always has, through the courtyard and the rattle of drying leaves and brittle grass, through the shrieking of night animals and the hiss of the watchfires. 

To ground. He goes to ground like an injured animal: limping and shuffling and foolishly determined to reach safety.

To the greenhouse. 

The door unseals, and no one is there to see him wallow. 

No one. 

_O Maker, hear my cry._

~ * ~


	13. in letters plain

~ * ~

The heavy hand of sleep presses him flat, lays him out and undoes his skin, picks open his ribs in some poor attempt to soothe, to gentle; the nausea rocks him as if he were on the Waking Sea, and beneath his gritty eyes he feels the white pulse of a fierce headache. 

Laid out on Mirèio's odd, Tevinter style wicker couch, blanket-less and warm under the greenhouse's magic, Cullen can hear a rhythmic pounding in the distance that has nothing to do with blood beating away between his ears. 

Gathering up his breath, he opens his eyes and the motion jams great black spots across his vision; he groans, hoarse with the burr of sleep, and the pounding stops.

He blinks, cranes his head around, and finds in the distance a black-banner shape stood at the alchemy table.

“Mirèio?” he whispers, and something shaped like relief crushes the red mess in his chest savagely. 

“Hello joli,” floats back as she turns to give him just the edge of her neat, white teeth. 

Cullen nearly bolts from the couch, but the world leaps and crashes, a vicious wire of pain lancing down from his temple to the root of his spine. He freezes, bites his lip. 

“Hold still,” she cautions with a murmur, and the noise starts its motions again, grinding and scraping away at whatever she's got in the large stone bowl, “I only need a moment longer. I had hoped you would have remained asleep until this was finished.”

“I did not hear the bells. Did the watch-captain not ring the bells?” Cullen murmurs, closing his eyes tight and uncurling his fists against his thighs. “When did you return?”

“An hour ago.”

“What is the hour?”

“Four before dawn,” is her lilting reply.

_Maker but I've missed your voice._

“Have you now?” she laughs, and her mouth is a bow drawn back in surprise. 

Cullen does not have to open his eyes to know that she is grinning: rough and rakish and silver-bright. In the distance he can hear clinking and rattling, water being poured, cups being set on a tray. She whispers something and the witch lights shiver, ring like little bells and then grow brighter, warmer. 

“I did not intend to say that aloud, Mirèio.”

And then she is above him, bending down to set her rattling tray onto the table beside his head; he reaches out, gropes for her hand and does not think of how presumptuous that is: his simple expectation of having the freedom to seek out her touch.

Her fingers close around his and he sighs: a quiet little thing tucked close under the meat of his tongue. When her other hand brushes against his hip, he shifts, drags himself across the couch until there's enough room for her to sit in the space he'd made for her. 

“But I am glad to hear it nonetheless, Cullen.” 

And then there is her dark, tinkling chuckle and her warm breath over his face. 

“I missed you as well,” she says with a murmur, taking in the waxy pallor of Cullen's face and the dark, heavy smears of purple under his eyes, “though I will admit, nothing could have prepared me to find you here. In my garden.”

“You offered me sanctuary,” Cullen says with enough force to push his conviction past the sourness on his tongue and the steady lance of pain from temple to spine, “and I availed myself of your gift, my lady.” The spots don't quite fade away, but he can see her now: see the too-sharp splendour of her face above his; see the pointed concern in her eyes; the gentle fire of her welcome.

And then her free hand comes up, the pads of two fingers pressing against the erratic hammer pulse at his throat, under his skin. 

“Nausea?” she murmurs, a question alight on her tongue, though she makes no room for his refusal. “Is it a little head ache, or gran mal?”

“I do not need a nursemaid, Mirèio,” Cullen returns hotly, a frown tugging down the corners of his mouth. Her fingers are still tucked against his pulse, and she grips the hand he's got in hers hard enough to push his bones together sharply. The sting distracts him, calls him up out of the fog of half-sleep. 

“Please, I am no one's nursemaid. I am offering a remedy. Nothing more. Do try not to be such a stubborn nug about it, Cullen.”

He scoffs, bites down hard on the groan trembling on his lips. The wire in his neck twinges again, and he feels himself pull taut as a bowstring.

The smell of ginger and royal elfroot hits him square between the brows, and he finds a small, hot cup pressed against his lips with a murmured: “Drink, Cullen. It will take the edge of the nausea, help you settle.” When he opens his mouth, he tells himself he is not half-expecting lyrium, but the liquid is not singing, it's only hot and bitter and _disgusting._

“Maker!” He chokes, wheezes. “What in the Void is in that, Mirèio? That's vile.” And then he watches her twist away, plucking something out of the little dish on the tray to bring some small, misshapen cube to his lips.

“An old mixture for morning sickness, and enough willow bark powder to cut that ache out of your head,” she replies with a laugh, the little sugar cube held between her thumb and forefinger, “and since you had a need of it, I thought I would to do my best to keep you from vomiting all over my new grass.” Her fingers are near enough that he can feel the heat beneath her skin, and he opens his mouth just enough so that she must slip the sugar onto the flat of his tongue by scraping her nails against his teeth.

Too bold indeed, for a man who is laid out flat on his back, shivering, with the green tint of bile high on his face.

“None of that,” is her bright, rueful admonishment. She withdraws her fingers even as his gaze narrows, disappointment passing swiftly over his wan face. Rather than give him time to bite out a reply, she lays the pad of her thumb against the thin line of his scar, over his lips. 

“Let it melt, Cullen,” Mirèio sighs, and it is a softer noise than she intends. 

The sugar melts slowly, and Cullen finds sweetness and the taste of mint chasing away the bitter root flavour of the tonic. Her thumb is still laid against his skin, moving in gentle, sweeping motions against the line of his scar, over curve of his lower lip, her nail pressing and then retreating. No intention but comfort, and yet he finds that sits poorly, awkwardly. Her face is carefully blank now, caution lurking in the tilt of her mouth.

“Seven weeks, Mirèio.” He hisses, even as he swallows down the last grains, even as the rough pad of her thumb moves in aimless, whispering strokes. “I told you not to tarry.”

Her thumb stops its motions, and oh there is what he has been waiting for: that wicked, silver'd grin, wide and white and curling; her teeth are neat and sharp against her red bow mouth. 

The tip of her nail presses ever so gently against the pink of his lower lip, and she waits, leans down and draws their foreheads together. “I do seek your forgiveness, most humbly. Whatever penance you wish from me, you may have it.” Her reward is his shiver, and the parting of his lips. She strokes against his teeth, bites her own noise off at the root when his hot tongue darts out to drag over the pad of her thumb. 

“But you should let that tonic do its work,” she whispers as the wicked curl of her mouth loosens into a soft, unhurried smile, “and then, in a little while, we can greet each other properly.” Her finger comes away, but not before she brushes her thumb against the fullness of his lower lip, painting his own saliva across his mouth with a deft stroke.

“No,” Cullen mutters, sour and insistent.

“Yes.” She chuckles, bristles. “Sleep, Cullen. I'll still be here when you wake.”

~ * ~

Sprawled beneath the green canopy – sunlight filtering in from the high windows in great, too-warm gouts, the heat strong against his face and the red dark of his eyelids – Cullen drifts on gentle tides, the burr of magic sifting through his flesh, forcing him to drag himself from sleep as if he were swallowing past a mouthful of honey.

He frowns, fingers twitching against his chest, and then he remembers: _Hello joli._

Lover.

_Lover?_

Just returned.

He bolts upright, eyes flicking from the little tray by his head to the neat pile of armour, tunic, and doublet beside the wide couch; Scivias gleams atop like a bloody crown, her dulcet, savage song prickling over his skin.

Heaving himself up, Cullen searches and is rewarded with a sight nearly two months absent from this place: the great Bear of Ostwick, braids shining and magnificent legs crossed at the ankles. Mirèio Trevelyan, sitting on the cluttered blackwood table, barefoot and clad only in her thin undershirt and breeches. 

The weight of her gaze pierces him; he watches as she brings a soft, pink-skinned peach to her red mouth, and suddenly his throat is very, very dry. 

“Are you better now, Cullen? Was that the lyrium?” Her words are careful, delicately placed and dipped in a hard-nosed sort of caution. She knows so little of the functions of the mineral outside of what its uses are in mana restoration, and it is not something she ever had access to before arriving here, before all this nonsense. Before this mark on her hand. If she does not do this gently, she knows he will tell her _nothing_ of what must have troubled him these past weeks.

Cullen frowns, and curls his fingers into fists. He doesn't want that, not right now. Maker, but he doesn't want that from her: to have her look at him, study him and wonder if he is well enough to greet her. If he is well enough to be touched. He won't have his weakness on her lips. Won't tolerate it. Not now. 

“Yes.” Under the dry flat of his tongue, he and his words are rough and scraped too hard. Raw.

She opens her mouth and he finds his hand flying up, palm flashing under the honey-soft morning light.

“No, no you have been gone seven weeks. Nearly two months. What you saw was, I.” Cullen shakes his head, marshals his intention up past his hesitation. “I do not want to discuss it. I do not want that here. Not right now. Leave it alone, Mirèio, please.”

The gentle, wholly unwelcome caution in her gaze slips away with every steady breath in his chest, and Cullen feels himself loosen: it's the first time he's managed to unknot himself in her company without playing the fool, and that is a fine, good thing indeed. From the look on her face, she is not as certain as he is, but there will be time later to speak of less pleasant things. 

No more of this foreign, unwelcome hunger. No more ghosts. No more of this thirst that he cannot slake. Not when all he has wanted is finally here before him, after all these long, long months.

Nearly a year they've been circling. 

No more waiting. 

“Greet me properly?” he asks, half a smile on his lips.

Bringing the peach to her mouth, she grins and makes a strange whistling click with the flat of her tongue curved to the roof of her mouth. Her gaze is bright, too-bright: a shadow-fletched thing hunting under green bowers.

“Beneïda demà, joli.” She bites down hard, teeth too-white against the sweet flesh, and the juice runs out the edges of her mouth, down her wrist. Her shoulders pull taut, flatten, and she draws herself up to her full height: a black-bannered tower as still as stone.

“Blessed morning to you, Mirèio.” Under his tongue is a rough, unquiet thread of joy, of wanting, and Cullen strides across the grass to meet her, weeks upon weeks of words crowding round to knock against the back of his teeth. The words are all soft things, bare things that he has stoked with the diligence they are owed. They are his words, his desires, and he will not keep them from her.

All the ugliness of their first letters, and she has not withdrawn his welcome. 

His desires are still welcome.

He is still welcome. 

Such an impossibility, such an unlikely thing. 

Too much to ask of a woman such as she.

And yet.

He is still welcome. 

“Seven weeks, Cullen, and you did not hunt through my books for _joli_?” is her unhurried reply, just as Cullen's hands slap down on either side of her hips and he slots himself neatly between her knees. She sets the peach aside and brushes her fingers under his chin, the burn of his stubble a welcome prickle against her skin. There is nothing quiet in his gaze, and even the dark rings beneath his eyes do not detract from the delight she can see cutting through all else. 

“I have decided I am content to wait. I will not have that from a book, I will have that from your mouth.”

“Oh but I missed you, joli,” Mirèio laughs, though it is perhaps a little more darkly fletched than she intends. Her hand drifts of its own accord, fingers trailing along the sharp line of his jaw, up to the shell of his ear, back to the bruise-coloured circles beneath his eye. The fine bridge of his nose and the little white line above his mouth. “Missed that tongue of yours as well. Very much.”

Like this, there is no need to tilt his face up, no need to leverage himself against her greater height, but Cullen buries his hands in the wealth of her braids nonetheless, clasps his palms over the nape of her neck just as she brings her feet up to tuck her ankles between his legs. And then they are both laughing, both half-breathless. 

Her fingers return to his chin, press just enough to bare his neck to her. 

He can smell the peach on her skin.

“I wonder,” she asks with a merry drawl, “how long did my little necklace keep? Did you touch the marks while I was gone? Did you remember their sting, and think of my mouth?”

Cullen groans, squeezes his eyes shut, pushes against her fingers until the ivory chips of her nails have drawn red lines down his neck and his breath is hers, flush against her lips; until he can taste the fruit between her teeth.

“A week, and yes.” Everything is tangled up, bound tight by longing and planning and the reality of her body against his, her hands on his face, and her wet, shining mouth.

“Yes, what?” she snaps, finds a grasping, vicious need in the pit of her chest. Bringing up a finger, she drags the juice over his lips, drinks down his little gasp, chases the flick of his tongue with the sharp edge of her nail. “Do enlighten me, Cullen.”

“I thought of you when I touched them.” Cullen bites, seeking out the sweetness on her fingers. Her hand stills, and he wraps his fingers round her wrist, brings the long, fine appendages to his mouth. His eyes shift back to hers, away from the juice slicking her palm, and he finds her gaze hooded, hawkish. “I thought of you when my fingers touched them, and they stung. I thought of your mouth. I was disappointed when they faded.” 

That admission drags something breathless from between her teeth, and Cullen feels a rough, white grin of his own stretch wide enough to sting his cheeks. 

He stops, eases the tip of one finger past his lips, curls his tongue into the ridges of her skin, chasing the bright taste of peach and bitter herbs and dirt on her skin. She offers him no resistance, and that makes him dizzy, snatches up his breath and smashes it to pieces. 

Pushing Mirèio's finger out with the flat of his tongue, Cullen trails his lips down her palm, down the sticky river left by the fruit. The rough stutter of her breath is a thing he chases after, a thing he desires above all else. There is nothing finer than feeling the harsh wind of her need striking over his skin and his forehead and his face. 

She hunches, leans down even as Cullen's grip on her wrist tightens. “Digues-me què és el que vol, joli.”

“Your mouth,” is his reply, spoken with a tongue thickened by desire, “put your mouth on my neck, Mirèio.”

“As you wish,” is her teeth against his jaw, her strength pushing against Cullen's grip, her lips dragging over his stubble. 

“Hold firm,” she commands. Cullen does, and the bones of her wrist grind together in the circle of his grip; she pushes and he meets her, until she's curled down and his arm is shaking with the effort, until his spine creaks and his shoulders pin together. 

Mirèio's iron matches his, and the heat of her mouth sears over his skin; she breathes open-mouthed against the hammer of his pulse and the cold points of her teeth soften his knees, send a rush of heat to his groin strong enough to have him digging his toes into the damp earth. 

Her tongue flicks out, slides lazily over thin skin, and under that hot drag Cullen bites down hard, bites down on the sudden, trembling cry in his throat. Makes some thick, strangled noise in its place.

“Hold,” she snaps, and then bites, pulls the salt-heavy skin between her lips and sucks, drags her open mouth over the sharpness of Cullen's exposed collarbones and bites again: twin marks on either side of his fine throat. The little noises trembling on the wet flick of his tongue are sweeter to her than any peach, and each one settles against her core, turning her pelvis into a bowl of liquid heat.

“It feels like an age since I've had something so sweet,” she murmurs, easing forward just enough to nip at the pink of his ear. 

Cullen twitches, tries to push into her chest; his grip on her wrist holds even as she bends his spine, pulls her ankles against his thighs sharply, sliding her free hand up to bury her fingers in the curls at the nape of his neck. 

“Open your mouth, Cullen,” Mirèio croons, fingers curling through the bright wheat of his hair. “There is no need to bite down. No one will hear.” The tremor that wracks his body is exquisite, intoxicating, and something wicked in her wants to chase after it, hunt for it under the colours of his skin until their both naked in the dirt, rutting. 

“Mirèio.”

“Sí?” Her tongue darts out, her teeth come down, kiss along the edge of his jaw, scrape over the bobbing motion of Cullen's adams apple. 

“Mirèio,” Cullen manages, forces out under the heat and the need and the aching, heavy curve of his cock between his legs. 

“Oui?”

“Get off the table,” he grits out with a stupid, drunken grin on his flushed face, “right this instant.” 

He releases his grip and her arm falls away, but she remains steady: a dark curve of braids and powerful shoulders; a dangerous thing, perched on a sheer cliff of action. 

Watching her uncurl is unbearable, is something fierce and needy and desperate in the pit of his chest. 

Here. She is here.

Here is the hunter, the hammer, the great Bear.

That wicked, well loved grin.

“I wonder,” she murmurs with a click of her tongue, “just what it is you took from that book I sent you after?”

Cullen would like to tell her it is _certainty_ , but that is a little too far from the truth at the moment. Not certainty, but perhaps a touch of clarity? 

“If I cannot ask you for what I want, will you settle for being shown?”

“Why can you not ask?”

“I am not good with words,” Cullen offers up with a hard, unyielding frown, “and I would not spoil this with my stone tongue. Let me show you, please.”

And then her mouth is on his, their noses pressing together sharply and her teeth knocking against his hard enough to make him jolt. He swallows down the little note of pain, even as she stretches his jaw wide, her tongue delving and her hands roaming.

So presumptuous. So bold. So overwhelming. So _sure_. 

So perfectly sure. 

Oh but he's fucking missed her.

And she deserves the same from him. 

Cullen eases his tongue in between her lips, seeking the sharp points of her teeth, the roof of her mouth, the soft, silken hollows of her cheeks. She growls against his advance, chuckles between their gasping for air. He drags his hands over her back, pulls at the hem of her cambric shirt until he's got his fingers laid against her skin, palms digging into the small of her back; the skin beneath his hands is terribly soft, completely unmarked, and when he traces the knots of her spine with the blunt edges of his nails she stills, sucks in a great breath of air, and says: “I'm not going to fuck you in my garden, joli. I'm not going to push you down in the dirt.” 

Opening his mouth, Cullen digs, keeps a hand firm against her back and sends the other roaming until he has her braids wrapped 'round his fist. 

One fine, dark brow lifts and he must pry her answer from between her lips.

“I do beg your pardon.”

He tugs.

“My lady.”

Hard. 

“But what, precisely, are you saying?”

That earns him something raw: a noisy hiss that pulls at her mouth, makes her breath stutter – if only for a moment. She never flushes, never wears the red heat of her desire on her face, not like he does, but somehow, somehow this is better. 

That he can pull _anything_ at all from her mouth is still a freshly unearthed delight, and far better than any splash of heat on her cheeks. 

“Someone will come knocking at the glass in a moment, in an hour,” Mirèio punctuates each word with a nip, wraps her fingers around the back of Cullen's head, thumbs sliding over the red heat in his cheeks, “and you deserve a bed. We deserve a bed. Somewhere we will not be interrupted. I will not tolerate that again.”

“No,” leaves his mouth in a rush, leaves him red and raw, “no I – we.”

Cullen finds his head tilting back, her fingers insistent and her grey eyes penitent. Sorry. Sorry to stop. Sorry and he does not like that at all. Not at all. “You promised me I could seek redress for your absence, Mirèio. Are you denying me?”

There are a hundred, hundred things still unsaid between them. Letters and words and dire thoughts that must be addressed. Terrible things that will need to be settled. 

Whatever this is, it is not simple. 

He doesn't know where this boldness is coming from, cannot find its root. Perhaps it is the weeks apart, perhaps it is the book. Perhaps it is that she did not push him away, even after all that he shared with her. 

Perhaps it is that she is _magnificent_.

Perhaps it is that he wants. 

He fucking _wants_.

Wants and is nearly blind for it. 

Driven to the depths, to the heights, for all his, their, endless wanting. 

Again.

Maker but he fucking wants.

“Me?” She laughs, low and soft, as whisper fine as a little, heated blade. “Me? Deny you? Have you been paying any attention at all, Cullen?”

“Yes?” Cullen grunts, shivers against the breach of her tongue and the sharp prick of her nails against the nape of his neck. Her mouth wanders, leaves him sucking heated air against his teeth, finds one of the quickly reddening marks on his neck and flicks her tongue over it again. “I thought so.”

“Oh no,” Mirèio replies, grasping at the curls beneath her hands, “I do not think you have, joli.” Her motion drags his wet, open mouth across her cheekbone and that spears her clean through, pushing heat out into her limbs and her ears, the tips of her fingers. 

_Maker take these fucking insufferably pretty Fereldans. Andraste protect me from their lovely faces._

Cullen finds his bottom lip pinned between his teeth hard enough to sting. Her fingers are moving down, dragging and grasping until she's palming his ass, her mouth flush to his ear. Her hands squeeze and he chokes on the moan that pools in his mouth, forces it back against the saliva on his tongue. 

“I told you,” she whispers, “not to bite down.”

Cullen groans, the familiar, red softness in his chest stinging and heaving under her fire. 

“I told you,” she continues, “whatever you desired, so long as you asked. I told you I was going to fuck you properly. Thoroughly.” 

Nose pressed to Cullen's cheek, she shifts, runs her teeth over the sharp line of his jaw until her breath mixes with his, until he's heaving against her, shoulders pinned and shaking. Her lips poised just at the corner of his parted lips. 

“I told you I intended to fuck you until you could not remember any other hands but mine. Until you begged for release.” Mirèio croons, hands and nails still digging roughly against his skin. “I told you I would make you a wreck of desire, of wanting.” 

The rush of his breath over her face is nothing but a long, jangling string of _oh, oh, please._

Her mouth drifts closer, her words low enough to shiver against his lips, down his throat. Maker, but he cannot _think_ under the bur of her tongue, under the heat of her hands. Everything is a tangle, a red mess; formless and shapeless; hot and sweet and sharp.

Sharp as her teeth.

Her mouth.

Her nails against his skin.

Cullen's breath hitches in his chest, and he must squeeze his eyes shut against her relentless, seeking fire.

“I keep my promises, joli,” she grits out with a hard, lilting snarl, “and I will have you, every fucking inch of you. And you, you will have the same of me. Whatever you want. But not without words. Not with out time enough for us both. This is not denial, Cullen, this is patience.”

Patience?

_Patience?_

“Seven weeks is not time enough? More than half a year, no nearly a year is not waiting enough?” He brings his hands up to wrap them around the back of her neck, to drag her the last, scant inches in. There is almost no space between his lips and hers, so little space he can feel her hum against his skin, at the back of his teeth. “I do not mind the dirt, Mirèio.” 

Above him, in the sparking field of his vision, her face is a naked blade: such promise as he has never known. When he seals his mouth over hers, when he swallows down her sharp exhale, her breathy groan, he feels a heady slick of satisfaction pooling in his guts making the heat between his legs heavier, more insistent. 

A knock sounds in the silence, hesitant and made oddly hollow by the glass.

“Inquisitor?”

And Cullen nearly chokes on his own tongue, on hers; he sees white, sees red, and finds a climbing rage settling on his face, mottling his skin with the sort of colour that speaks not of pleasure but of violence. 

“You know,” Mirèio says with a sigh, pulling away just enough to take in the wet shine of Cullen's lips, to trace the outrage on his hot cheeks with the flat of thumb, “I distinctly recall telling the vast majority of our runners and scouts that so long as I was in the greenhouse, I was not to be disturbed. I believe my words were: only under the direst of circumstances.”

“If something is not on fire,” Cullen rasps, “I will have who ever is on the other side of that door mucking out the nuggalope stalls for the foreseeable future. Until the ending of the world.”

“You know,” she laughs, “that might not be so very long a span of time.” 

Cullen snorts, only hisses a little when she drifts away, that same, irritatingly familiar apology on her mouth.

“That was not a jest, Mirèio.” He calls to her retreating back, following the sprawl of her shoulders and the jaunty clip of her gait. “I want a name.”

“I know, joli,” is her low, chuckling reply, “I know.”

In the distance he can hear the low, pointed lash of her voice, and the softer reply of a startled messenger. Whatever the reason behind the interruption, he cannot sort it out from here. He shakes his head, shakes out his limbs, picks up and examines the little bottles, explores the maze-like intricacies of her alchemical equipment. An open notebook lies on the table, and he finds her handwriting running neatly alongside Dorian's fine, sweeping lines, the pair of them working through questions of density, measure, heat, exposure. He doesn't understand even a third of what is written here, but it would appear they are both mages with a love of abstract intellectual tussling.

There is a bright note of humour on his tongue, even as he listens for the noise of her return. He's not departed the field yet; there is still much to settle, much to speak of, much to have. 

Without the sword at her side, her tread is much too silent, and only the sudden taste of _green_ at the back of his throat tells him she has returned. 

He turns to meet her, mirth still bright in his mouth, and finds her as silent as her footsteps.

There is a letter in her hands. 

“Mirèio?”

Whatever desire lived in her face, in the hooks of her gaze, it is utterly gone now; in its place is caution, is the hard, freshly whetted edge of a cutting fear. The letter in her hands is sealed by a great, fat drop of wax dyed in the loveliest shade of blue, a wide ribbon of darkest plum beneath the intricate looking seal. 

“I do recall that I asked for a name.” Stupidly, it's the only thing that manages to work past the knot in his throat; she has not looked so sharp in many, many months. 

“Ah,” the taller woman chuckles, and the noise is harsh, overloud in the newly unearthed silence. “Well, I should like to give you that name, save the poor thing wasn't here on Inquisition business.” There is something prickling under her skin, something that wears sharp teeth, bites deep.

“No?” His grin becomes a frown and he tilts away, seeking out her face. Her eyes. Cullen finds her pensive, turned inwards, far away.

“Mirèio? Who's business was he here on?” 

“The lad was there on my business.” Her teeth snap down, lips thin as a skinning knife.

She picks open the letter and skims it like a woman searching for relief, for some escape, some way out. The hard lines of her proud, knife-sharp face are deep, as if she is wrestling with something old, something very close to the cold, indifferent silence she wore in the yard all those months ago. A little nettle of concern pierces him, sticks in his throat and tangles up his breath. 

Cullen waits her out.

The moments pass and she grows stiff, still and stone-like; he reaches up, pushes himself onto the balls of his feet to lay his fingers against her skin. She grunts and he pulls, knots his fingers through her braids and flattens his palm against the nape of her neck. 

“Tell me, please.” If she wishes to see his request as a question, it is her choice to make.

“I'm not certain there is anything to tell, joli.” Her tongue is useless, thick, and her lips work against her, twist awkwardly around things she unwilling to let breathe in the light. This isn't his business. It is no business of any southerner, most especially one who is about as far from a mage as one might possibly be. 

Home is so very, very far from here; a thousand, thousand leagues and two great oceans distant is she from her safety, from her refuge. 

Cullen folds a hand over his mouth, if only to pin his frown behind his palm. 

“What is it, Mirèio?”

The woman before him sighs, drags a hand up to clasp it over his, and for a moment she is bent, lowered, and Cullen knows only the very sharp bite of fear in the red meat of his chest. 

“A letter from Asha. Mage business.” Between her flattened mouth, her tongue moves quick, shears the tails off her words with easy violence; if she keeps each one short enough, they will not fly half so far as they might. 

There is so little in her voice, every word pressed under the sharp flat of her tongue with just enough purposeful blankness to set Cullen's fingers to itching, a nervous heat prickling over his skin. In the rift of her silence there are words caught in the dry expanse of his throat – a vehement denial of her silence – but she evades. Picks up her own hammer and drives it down. The force of it, of her denial, drives all else to the dirt.

“You needn't concern yourself.”

Cullen scoffs, even as she reaches out, even as she cups his face in her hands, parchment crinkling loudly in his ear, and offers him an apology with the dip of her tongue against his. As if her heat should be enough to settle this sudden, violent dislocation.

She turns away – shoulders hunched and face stiff as stone – and Cullen finds himself _bereft_.

The Bear has come back to the stones and yard and the halls. 

The Bear has returned, and now they have three days.

Three days until they must depart again.

Halamshiral is waiting. 

And there is a letter folded neatly between them.

A line, drawn by her hands.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I swear these idiots will fuck like rabbits soon, but this is like getting all the ducks lined up in a row so I can knock them down. One by one.
> 
> Thank you for slogging through with me, everyone, especially the folks from the Kmeme, as you've been waiting for new material since March. I do sincerely apologize for the atrocious delay. Good news is, I still have a three chapter lead, so I shouldn't have delays in the weekly posting schedule again.
> 
> Again, much love to all you readers. I love hearing from you guys, you are all so kind and generous with your reviews.


	14. There is written

~ * ~

“It is good to have you returned to us, Inquisitor,” Leliana murmurs, shuffling through the reports on Red Templar movements, her quill flicking over the ones she must get into her scouts' hands before nightfall. There's so little time now, and they cannot afford to waste a moment over idle chatter. “But I must caution you, we have no time for pleasantries.”

“Understood,” Mirèio replies, and her face smooths out like a stone: cold and flat and utterly bare, scraped clean of any intention. “Speak your piece, sénéchal. The Ambassador and the Commander will follow you.”

“We must consider this carefully,” the Spymaster begins, “or we will tear apart the only remaining stabilizing force in all of southern Thedas.”

Cullen fights the urge to roll his eyes. _Do you forget who you are speaking to?_ he mutters to himself, and even in his own head his tone is sour. _Are Josephine and I the only ones who remember she travelled far and wide before Andraste marked her? What is Leliana's game?_

“I am well aware of Orlais and her might, Leliana.”

“Then perhaps you would be open to suggestions, Inquisitor?”

“What manner of suggestions?”

“This is an opportunity to forward solutions to age old problems.” Leliana offers up with a little grin that shows no teeth but is no less cutting for its softness. “And I, for one, cannot see how the Inquisition would not avail itself of the chance to alleviate some of the worst injustices lying in the oldest foundations of Orlais.”

The Inquisitor's eyes narrow pointedly, the hand on the pommel of her sword tightening. “Leliana, I am not here to topple empires. The Inquisition is not here to strip rightful rulers of their crowns. Our intercession in Orlais is born of the utmost necessity, not any desire on our part to effect grand, sweeping changes.”

“What you did with the mages belies your intention, Inquisitor. You waved a hand, and gathered up more than half the mages in southern Thedas. Brought them here as equals. And that, that earned you the ire of nearly every living chantry mother, disciple, journeyer, and so on down the line to the yeoman in the fields of Ferelden, to the merchant in the Marches, to the tailor in Val Royeaux so inclined to think of mages as lesser than others. You did that, and no one, no power so gathered here or anywhere else, could have stood against you in that choice. And Thedas knows this.”

“You are driving at something very specific, Sister Nightingale,” Mirèio interrupts with a cutting swipe of her hand, “out without before I lose my patience.”

“de Chevin.”

“Who?” Mirèio frowns, fingers curling around her chin and a question stitched between her brows.

“That pretty thing you sent back here some weeks ago,” Leliana replies with a laugh, “and one of the few chevalier whose loyalty is now firmly with the Inquisition.”

“Ah yes,” the mage grins, “that one. What of him?”

Cullen feels himself sharpen, palms waxing hot in the confines of his gloves. That wolfish smile of hers does not belong on her face right now, not in this room, not under these circumstances. Not for that _boy_ and his misplaced swagger.

Leliana lifts one fine red brow and there is that smile again: the one that is nothing comforting. “He knows much of the Empress, he was her personal champion after all. I believe it would behoove us to recall that much has been done under her name that would be shameful to hear. I know there is some unpleasant, intimate history between the Golden Empress and Mistress Briala.”

“The leader of Val Royeaux's alienage? The Empress, and an elvhen woman?” Mirèio laughs. “Fascinating.” 

“Aye.”

Mirèio's hand falls from Scivias' hilt, and for a moment the ruby spins thin red threads against the ivory sprawl of the map. “Are you suggesting I seek her out, Sister?”

“In a manner of speaking, yes,” is Leliana's careful reply, given over with the barest pretense of deference, “for I would not have our Inquisition tied to agents of backwards looking, spiteful warmongers who have the audacity to publish treatises in the Grand Academié on how lowly the elves and their culture are. How inferior. I would not have us allow a Chevalier like de Chevin to wander free unsupervised, when he and his brothers take their oaths standing in the blood of the innocents they cut down in the streets of Val Royeaux.”

“What?” Her voice falls like a hammer, Cullen's equal exclamation hot on the heels of her thunder. 

“Did you not know?” Leliana queries, hands spread wide as if to offer benedictions for such a pointed failure. 

“Do not play these games with me, Leliana!” Mirèio spits. “I am more a merchant, more a sheep-herder than I am anything else. I am not concerned with the practices of Orlesian chevaliers, I never have been. Whatever my ignorance says of me, know that I am in no mood to dance around this. Speak.” 

“Chevaliers earn their title by seeking out elves in the dead of night, any who are beyond the walls of the alienage, and cut them down to prove their sword is fit to draw blood.”

“I beg your fucking pardon?”

Up go the Nightingale's hands, and Mirèio has the overwhelming urge to reach across the table and shake until some little emotion steals into Leliana's face other than that calm, measured chill. 

“And from all this,” Mirèio breathes, “you expect that now I shall do what, exactly? As I am, according to the letters and proclamations you and my Ambassador have so kindly spread throughout our holdings and allies, a great champion to those who have suffered violence at the hands of the mighty, what must my answer be, hm?” 

Rage.

Her voice is thunder, and her face is a naked blade: shining and sharp with intent.

Cullen knows this face.

This is not the Inquisitor.

This is Mirèio, and she wants _blood_. 

And suddenly he wants to drive Leliana and Josephine from beneath the high-climbing ceiling – out from the shadows of the red wax threads and the little, golden pawns – and speak to Mirèio alone. Alone. Tell her what is being done, if she does not already understand.

_Do not let her drive you into a corner,_ he pleads to himself, to her, to her steel-sharp eyes and the savage tilt of her mouth. _Do not let her bait you._ Beneath the gloves, he suspects her knuckles are just as pale as his: a warrior's grip made bone white and crushing in its outrage. 

It is unwise to drive at a battlemage. And only a fool would stand before a bear and think their own head thick enough to withstand its claws. 

“Are you not a Champion of Justice, my lady Inquisitor?”

“To say such a thing is an arrogance beyond the pale, Sister Nightingale.”

“I do not think so, my lady.” Josephine offers up, hands held out to gentle, to turn the sharpness away. “This is a delicate line we are treading upon, but the truth of the matter is as Leliana describes.” 

She catches her breath, and holds high her chin under the lash of her friend's displeasure; they, neither of them can be that always, and ofttimes it is simply that a mask has a purpose, and cannot be removed until it is safe to do so. 

“Under your guidance, this Inquisition has become a great force of change. The Templars are under the sway of the Elder One. The Seekers are weakened. We treat with the Grey directly, under Warden-Commander Blackwall's authority. We need not seek the approval of Val Royeaux for a single thing we do. People know this. The high houses of Thedas see this. When we intervene in Halamshiral to save the Empress, who emerges behind that throne will matter more than ever. Even more important is the direction of the policies and efforts that hand behind the throne will implement. Our choices, they will be essential to Orlais' very survival for generations to come.” 

Mirèio brings her hands up, scrubs them down her face as if to peel something away, something cold and distasteful that makes her as stone-faced as Leliana. “If you meant that as comfort, princesa, you did a piss poor job, I assure you.”

Josephine opens her mouth, rocking up onto her toes, the chain of her office making golden music round her neck, and Mirèio will have none of it. Not a word.

“What you are asking me to do is madness. Sheer, blind madness.”

“But you have not heard my proposal yet,” Josephine interrupts, a hand cutting through the thunderclouds on the Inquisitor's face. “Nor the Commander's.”

Mirèio finds herself leaning across the great table, the tips of her braids hissing against the supple velum map even as she lets the oak take her weight, even as it creaks and sighs under her hands.

“Then tell me, Ambassador. And be swift about it.”

Josephine squares her shoulders, and rustles through her sheaves of parchment for a particular note she has been saving. She holds it aloft for a moment, pointedly ignoring Leliana's flutter of irritation. Information is the woman's dearest weapon, but she is not the sole wielder of its might within these walls.

“The Empress, whatever her shortcomings, is not a warmonger or a bigot. She has no hand in the Chevaliers as a whole, those reins belong to her cousin, Gaspard de Chalons. Celene is an idealist. A pragmatic one, but an idealist nonetheless.”

Mirèio studies the elegant Antivan script laid out on the parchment: efforts to quell disquiet and abuse in the alienages, efforts to resolve blood-feuds and petty squabbles with equanimity and an eye towards peace beyond a few years of quiet. A capable ruler hemmed in by disbelievers and naysayers and war hounds driving after a pissing-match with Ferelden. A ruler with no child, and no desire to bow to a husband who would most assuredly attempt to climb above her. 

“She is not perfect, Inquisitor,” Josephine continues with a poorly felt smile, “but she makes a greater effort than most. It would be unwise, and unjust, to see her toppled now, when there is so much more for her to accomplish, if only she had a mightier ally.”

“And we are that mightier ally?” Mirèio scoffs; the anger is still high and clear on her face, but she has little recourse to address it at the moment, even in the face of Josephine's quiet sympathy.

Josephine nods, her narrowed gaze speaking of regret, of apology, and Mirèio has no choice but to move forward.

“Commander?” she prompts, and Cullen finds the greenhouse is very, very far from her, from him, in this moment. Here is the line, and they must both abide by its cruelty now. 

He's been baited into this as much as she has, and now he must speak his piece and stand strong under the hammer that will no doubt fall on his head. 

“Gaspard. He is the most logical choice.”

Mirèio jolts as if struck, and then her teeth are sharp beneath the curl of her mouth.

“Did the commander of the Inquisition's forces just ask me to throw my weight behind the man who – ”

“Oversees Chevalier inductions?” Cullen barks, feeling red-raw and far too bitter. If all of Orlais were to fall into the sea tomorrow, he would sleep the sleep of the truly contented. “Yes. One and the same.” If it took the Spymaster too, he would not make much noise over the loss. Despite the fact that Leliana is something approaching a friend, the Spymaster is another matter entirely.

The mage before him rises up from her hunch over the table, and there is something terrible in the weight of her gaze.

He holds a hand aloft to forestall her fury, and prays to the Maker and his Bride that she will spare him the lash of her tongue a moment longer.

_She will not abide this from you,_ a quiet voice speaks to him. _She truly is a champion, a defender of those most in need, and you have just asked her to dirty herself for the getting of a bully and his swords. She'll string you up for this on principle alone._

“It is not the cleanest option, but it is the most secure. The Duke has nearly the sum total of Orlais' military might under his sway. The soldiers, officers, and generals, are his. Not Celene's. If we wish for Orlais to survive the Elder One's plan, she must have her martial force in full or we will get nothing from this meddling. I take no pleasure in this, but we need the soldiers. Desperately.”

“So I must hitch my cart to a murderer? To a legion of murderers?” Mirèio retorts, a violent refusal splintering her face wide open; she grasps for the cold stones of her walls to raise them high against the lesser need to be angry with Cullen. She needs the stone, for it is not Cullen she is angry with, it is the Commander. There is a difference. Or, at the very least, she wishes for there to be a difference. “You would have me extend a hand to men who roam about their own fucking city with the blood of innocent citizens on their blades? I think not.”

His lips flatten, turn his face into unyielding slate; the fingers of her outrage tug sharply at the edges of his mouth, prying at him. Picking. Seeking. If he looks away, she will pull harder. 

“Ah,” Leliana cuts in, offering her hands as if to draw the Inquisitor away, back to better path, “but it is not just that the Duke allows the Chevaliers their traditions. He himself takes great care to attend salons in support of, and to fund scholars in the Academié whose sole purpose is to cast aspersions on the ancient elves of Arlathan, on the elves of the Dales, on those scholars who cry out that Halamshiral should be given back into the hands of her people.”

“The nattering of scholars is meaningless if the Academié is burned to the ground and a hoard of demons is picking over the bones!” Cullen bellows, jabbing a finger in Leliana's general direction. “If not a hoard of demons, then civil war will tear Orlais in two. Celene is not strong enough to bind the nation together. There is no love for her in the army, and they will need little excuse to back Gaspard's claim once more.”

“To think there is such shortsightedness in you Commander. Scholars shape the words that fall from the people's tongues. Their power is very real in Orlais. And you would let the Duke continue to spread hatred and discontent for the sake of an army so disloyal to its Empress that they would turn their backs at the slightest provocation? What benefit is to be had in a force so fickle? The Inquisitor needs loyal men.”

“Empress Celene has time enough to win back her generals! She needs an advisor who is less entangled in the Game to provide some perspective. She needs allies strong enough to silence her detractors. The Inquisition can give her that time if we only – ”

“Enough!”

The Bear has come back to the yard, back to the stones and the table and the maps, and she is furious. 

“Not another word out of any of you!”

Cullen has absolutely no difficulty remembering that the voice in her chest was strong enough to speak against a creature nearer to a god than a man, even while that would be god was attempting to snap her like a little bundle of kindling. 

Mirèio quiets, draws in a deep breath and reaches for stillness, for stone. Feeling blindly for the great, steady river of her patience, she tries again. 

“I have been gone nearly two months,” the mage snaps, her gaze narrowed by something that might be called distaste. “In that time we have begun hunting Red Templars in their own camps, chasing down supply caches and mines with very little warning, and even less time to prepare. I spent two weeks in the Hissing Wastes with Dorian cursing about the sand so vociferously I'm quite certain the Maker Himself heard the whole sad tale. We have been bartering with Orlesians for so long I am beginning to sound like one.”

Josephine laughs, a merry little shiver of mirth under a thick pall of discontent, but it gets her what she hopes for: a tick of humour at the corner of her friend's mouth. 

“We have been bullied into personally sealing a rift for some snot-nosed highborn, just so that same snot-nosed highborn could then turn around and bully an invitation from that, unbeknownst to me, bastard Duke.”

“Flames,” Cullen curses before he can bite down on his tongue; he rubs a gloved hand over his forehead and finds an ugly sort of discontent in the pit of his belly. “That certainly wasn't in your report.”

Mirèio starts with a sour laugh, shrugs her shoulders and says: “Yes, well I knew I'd beat that raven to the gates, and I spent most of the journey back with my horse tied to Bull's.”

Cullen finds a little frown on his face, a question stitched between his brows. “So it would imply that we, the Inquisition, will be going to Halamshiral as the Duke's guests?” He can practically taste the hope for convincing her to choose the army over the Empress turning to ash in his mouth. 

At this, Mirèio sighs. “Unfortunately, yes.”

“Well that complicates matters.” Leliana mutters, a little portion of ice receding from her voice. “Certainly makes entering into the fray as a neutral party rather difficult.”

Mirèio opens her mouth, and then her lips curl up as if she's just remembered something truly hilarious. “I think I'll take a page from Sera's note book, and just say this: 'fuck that fucking nug-humping shite. Looks like we're in 'is pocket, donnit?'”

“It does, sadly,” Josephine replies with a murmur, with a stiff chuckle. “Such a shame.”

“Aye.”

Silence falls like a shroud, all eyes resting on the scattered pawns and the thick, heavy lines denoting territories and influences and needs, weaknesses, losses. More than one of them thinks it would not be so great a loss if the whole thing were to catch fire at this very moment, if only for a brief, personal slaking of a very personal grudge. 

“I know you all want an answer now, but you'll not be getting one today.”

The Spymaster shifts ever so slightly, hands unfolding from their perch at her back.

“No. No more talking. I will not decide the fate of an Empire such as Orlais before the noonday meal. As if it were a trifle.” Mirèio cautions, a warning in her voice as heavy-handed as the sun above their heads. “I will speak to de Chevin, I will have reports on Gaspard, on Celene, on Briala, from the three of you. I will not do this hastily, and I do not give a single fucking copper about how little time there is left to us.”

“Out,” she barks.

Josephine startles, but Leliana looks far too much the cat that has just been given a generous portion of cream.

Cullen feels fit to drive his fist through the table, propriety and professionalism be damned. 

“Now.”

Leliana is the first to move; Josephine follows on her heels, colour high on her cheeks and a dark look in the narrowed cut of her eyes. 

Before Cullen can march himself around the table, the Inquisitor holds up a hand.

“Not you, Commander,” she speaks with a passing attempt at gentleness, “I have a need of your eyes. Prepare the map.”

Cullen frowns, nods, feels himself pull taut as a bow.

A stack of correspondence drops onto the table and the Inquisitor mutters: “Every Red Templar holding, mine, camp, scout post. All of it. I need you to guide me through it, help me make sense of it. Perhaps we shall find a pattern. Something I missed.”

Mirèio finds a little hand digging tight into the mail at her elbow, Josephine staring up at her with a hard, unrelenting cast to her amiable face. She folds her own hand over Josephine's and tries for a smile, no matter how poorly felt.

“You will be in my office for tea at the bell before noonday meal, yes?”

“Of course, princesa.”

“Good,” the smaller woman huffs before tucking her quill behind her ear and turning on the point of her heel, skirts rustling brightly and head held ever high. “I trust you will see the wisdom in ensuring you are not late.”

A dark, tinkling chuckle, and then: “As my lady commands.”

The great, heavy doors creak open and then slam shut, and Cullen has not the slightest notion of what to do with himself other than prepare the map as she has asked. 

When she makes no effort to move, no sign of intent, he calls to her.

“Inquisitor?”

“No,” she replies.

“Mirèio.”

Her shoulders slump and she lets go the long, deep breath that refused to leave her throat. Feeling blindly for the edge of the table, she settles her hip against it; she keeps her eyes firmly shut.

The silence falls like a hammer, and it's ringing is harsh under the red drip of wax.

It's nearly instinctual, his thought to offer comfort, one he'd believed he'd lost quite a few years ago. Shockingly enough, he finds it more readily than he might have expected. Without thinking overmuch on whether or not his touch, if he himself, will be welcome, Cullen mirrors her. Sets himself beside her and wraps an arm round her waist, fingers tangling in her taillole. 

Mirèio offers to him quietly: “I am sorry I was so rough. I blame my years on the mountains.” Laughter cuts through, quick and rigid as plucked strings. “Herding sheep has made me very loud. And I should not have let Leliana bait me into that trap so effectively. ”

“No,” Cullen returns to her, even as his heart races, even as the understanding strikes him in the chest: she has never sought out comfort from his hands. That night on the battlements had been a moment of weakness, a moment of understanding between two very different people. Not comfort. Not affection. This is something else. 

This is more.

“No you should not have,” is given over with a smile, though he feels thin, and far too weak, “we should not have. But Leliana is a force to be reckoned with,” he chuckles drily. “She always has been.”

Mirèio laughs, feeling as if she has been threaded through the smallest of awls.

“But that will not change your mind, will it?”

“No,” she replies with no little portion of bitterness on her tongue, “I'm afraid it will not.” 

Cullen chuffs, sour at heart and yet lighter than ever. So much lighter. 

And then her gloved hand is creeping up his vambrace until she's shaking him by the shoulder.

“Understand, joli,” and he smiles, though he knows she likely cannot see it on his face, “I am beyond grateful that you do not withhold your thoughts from me, even when you know I am unlikely to choose your method. Even when we disagree, I need each of you to tell me so. It is vital.”

“Of course, Mirèio.” His hand hovers, and he thinks of reaching up to lay it against her cheek, of trailing his fingers down her neck. Thinks of how his touch might aid her in shutting out the noise, the din, the world itself, if only for a moment. 

“I fear,” hangs in his mouth, and Cullen finds that is not good enough. That word is not what he intends to give to her, not what he should give to her. He starts again. “No, I _know_ I spent far too many years silent to fall back into that now. Not for anyone's sake will I keep quiet, not even yours. Though, more often than not, I understand we will not agree. What did you say in your letter? Like two rams fighting over the same patch of grass.” 

“Good,” she laughs, and the sound is altogether too brittle to be just mirth. The sting in her mouth is surprising. “Do you truly think we should choose a man like Gaspard?”

“In a better world, if we had the time, if we had some other choice, some other means.” He looks to her, to the intricate lines of her braids and the little copper clasp strung through, and finds he is sorry to ask these things of her, sorry to have opened his mouth and said something so foolish. “No.”

She laughs, bitter and bright.

It hurts.

“But we need the men, and I am afraid that if we conscript,” Cullen sucks in a great breath and thinks of home, of Honnleath, of Branson, and Rosalie and Mia, “the people, the farmers and the crofters, the villeins and the yeomen and all those not defended by title or wealth, will hate us for it.”

He is so fucking tired of people hating the banner he stands under. 

The Templars earned every ounce of that hatred, but he is still sick to the back of his teeth with the thought.

The Inquisition will not become the Order. 

She sighs beside him, tugs at the braid knotted by her cheek; her fingers twitch, mouth made rough by her noisy unwinding. “So you would rather soldiers already dirtied? Soldiers who have already agreed to die for some other fool's cause.”

His grip on the pommel of his sword tightens, and he swallows past the thorns. “At least, Mirèio, our cause is better.” 

“I do not speak to the Maker often, but I do pray this is true.” It is as near a confession to her distance from the House of her god as she dares. “For your sake, for mine, joli, I do hope He is listening.” She is well used to the silence; to the empty, ringing stones. 

Her little endearment spears him open, unwinds the rigid set of his mouth and warms the tips of his fingers like nothing else. 

“It is true,” Cullen replies, an old, well-worn certainty sifting through his chest. “If it were not, Skyhold would not now be a place of refuge for so many. You draw them here.” 

“No,” she laughs, “I do no such thing. No one comes here seeking the protection of someone like me. The Inquisitor is responsible for that, not me.”

“Whatever is that supposed to mean?” Cullen barks, stung by her words.

“Not much, joli.” 

“Mirèio,” is a warning, is a rejection of the clipped and careful way in which she is shaping her words.

“Then again.” She sighs, rolls the words around the roof of her mouth, unsure of their use. “I think I do an excellent job of reminding them I'm not Andraste brought back to the flesh. What sort of holy creature goes about cursing and quarrelling like I do? After all, if the Maker is behind this, I'd have thought He'd have chosen someone a little more respectable than a rough and tumble hedge-mage who's more at home amongst sheep and noisy markets than anywhere else.”

“Here now,” he soothes, finding the soft hollow behind her ear, his gloved fingers curling under her chin, “who better than a sheep-herder? Who else could get so many thick-headed, self-interested squabbling fools to all follow in the same direction? The better direction?”

“Cassandra Pentaghast,” Mirèio laughs, and laughs, and laughs. 

“Honestly, woman,” Cullen huffs, knocking his elbow into the jingling mail at her side. 

When that door closed, she'd marked the line with such deliberate force, and then asked for him to use her name. Drew the line with her own hands, and then asked him to scuff it out. To see when she did and did not wish for him to abide by its borders. 

He has lived his life by the rote of lines, of borders, of limits and laws and rules that divide and mark with such force there was always shame in him in the wake of their crossing. Now, now it is different. Not quite the same shame; not quite the same force. The lines are needed because their task is terrible, formidable, paramount, but unlike before, this one is a choice. 

The Inquisition is a choice. 

And so is she; so is what he desires from her; so is what he longs for; so is what will come – what breathes between them under this dusty-handed silence.

Thusly does he need those lines between Inquisitor and Commander to be as clear and dark and strong as can be, but, Maker knows, he's been hiding behind them long enough. 

_Ask her for her cares, my friend, and she will tell you. But you must ask._

_Be brave._

“All things considered, Mirèio, might I ask why it is you'd tolerate my counsel at all?”

A silver-bright knot of laughter leaves her throat, and she prods him sharply in the shoulder in return. “Honesty, Cullen. That is why.”

He frowns, waves his hand under her nose as if to encourage her to continue.

Under the wax and the dusty, distant heat, Mirèio sighs, wields her noise with care enough to cover over her surprise. That is a bold question indeed, one that deserves an honest answer.

“Leliana,” she begins, an oddly wistful note caught under her tongue, “I respect her beyond measure. She is a woman who has fought, and fought and found the world wanting. I understand that anger, for it is very much like my own. But she has goals, motivations, plans that I cannot suss out.”

Cullen finds an awkward, rough handed chuckle in the pit of his chest. “I have known her for some time now too. Her ways have never been anyone else's business but her own.” 

“If she were to tell me, I think I would mostly agree with them in full,” Mirèio murmurs with a little portion of hesitation on her lips, “but I think that is not in her nature. And so I am wary of what she wants and why. She believes in something much greater than herself, and I am unused to people such as she.” 

“And Josephine?” Cullen asks, keeps his face and his tone as neutral as possible. She's never shared any of this with him before. Perhaps they have both been too gentle with the other, been too slow to ask for the other's opinions outside of their positions. He will take whatever she is willing to share, even if it is late in the offering.

“Is and always will be my dearest friend, but sometimes she sees alliances a hundred steps and ten years worth of consequences from now, and her goal is to barter, to squeeze the nobles, the Houses, as dry as she can, and in that arena absolute honesty as to methods and motives is not always possible, or even wanted. More often than not, I agree with her in full. Unreservedly. Diplomacy is the currency of my Houses as much as hers, and there is an immediate kinship there, to the point of, ah, an unwillingness on my part to consider other solutions. But sometimes, sometimes, words are not enough, sometimes her focus is too narrow, to set towards the nobility and their nonsense. Sometimes, the only answer is the sword.”

Cullen laughs, but it is nothing at all built like laughter.

It's an ugly truth, no matter how one might approach it.

“And myself?” 

“You,” Mirèio begins, an oddly knotted caution on the tip of her tongue, “you are here to help people. Help the soldiers, help the refugees. For all that I disagree with your insistence on the use of our army, I see your intent is to do something, anything, to help where you can. Every once in a while I hand you a particularly stupid request and I get the pleasure of watching you unequivocally refuse to stoop so low as to concern yourself with petty, childish pissing matches between narrow-sighted highborns. Because,” she breathes, “I know that you will tell me exactly what you think, even if you know I will be angry, that I will disagree. Even when you are wrong, stubborn thing that you are.”

There's not a Maker blessed thing in him that knows what to do with these words, with her estimation of his character. A little, fierce note of rejection sits on his tongue, pushes past his teeth with a force that makes him pull away hard. Feeling as if a thin, barbed string of regret has wrapped its un-gentle hands around his throat, Cullen swallows his protest whole.

If he were truly honest, he'd tell her about Ferelden, about his belief in the necessity of the Circles, about how little he'd done for the mages under his care until Meredith was raving in the courtyard. He'd tell her of watching Hawke become a tower of rage and bitterness, the man staring at him as if all the sins of Kirkwall, of the world itself, flowed from the Gallows and the people who kept it standing. If he was an honest man, he'd tell her of what it was like to see the man who'd believed in the City, in its citizens, in the chance to stop all this madness before it began, become something vengeful, something terrible. He'd speak to her of what it was like to have the Champion of all fucking Kirkwall stare at him as if he wanted nothing more than strike him to the ground, to blot out from this world every filthy, lowly, dog who dared wear the Lady's sword of mercy on their chest as if _mercy_ were a thing any of them understood at all.

He'd tell her of Orsino.

Anders.

Meredith.

Surana.

The demon.

He has to tell her these things. He must. But in some ways, in all the ways that matter, he is still afraid. How could she stand beside him, smile at him, _touch_ him, if she knew what blood was on his hands? Every moment of weakness. Every opportunity ignored. Every pair of hunted, frightened eyes that had pleaded with him for some respite from the terror, from the fist, from the silence of confinement, from that awful, awful Brand. 

That lightless, empty sun.

“You speak much too highly of me, Mirèio.” There is nothing in his voice. Nothing.

All that fear, all that violence, all that ruin, all that pain, and he had stood in its heart and been _unmoved._

So long wilfully blind, so long silent; so much time spent little better than a cruel, ignorant shape, only the suggestion of a man. Wholly unworthy to kneel before the Maker and his Bride. 

So many monstrous choices he'd made. 

She snorts. “I speak highly of a great many people so gathered here. You would not be here if you did not wish to do good. You told me as much, months ago. In the yard at Haven. Do you think Cassandra would have chosen you if she hadn't seen exactly what you were capable of?” 

“No,” he sighs. The sum total of her words, of what they are stepping around – the shadow of the City of Chains leering from behind the sharper corners of their words – makes his skin tight, makes him want to scrub at his arms and his face until something comes away. Whether it is skin or blood or memory he isn't entirely concerned, so long as something comes _off_.

No. No he's not here to wallow. He's here for her, for the map and the markers and some way out of this red mess that eats at him in the night. 

He's here for the silence in her touch.

From her greater height, Mirèio watches Cullen's hand drift towards her. The motion is slow, and frighteningly tender. There is little in her that knows what to do with this man's care, with the thing she's asked for in her own roundabout way. Cullen's fingers are shivering faintly, but their warmth against her cheek is sure, steady and true. 

Mirèio leans into his touch, and Cullen feels a wholly quiet, wholly private sense of something that might resemble victory curling behind his ribs. This is very like having the wild thing come down from the mountain finally deign to let you pet it, though it is not in its nature to allow such liberties lightly.

Her gentleness lasts only a moment.

“Cullen?” The question is as sharp as her fingers digging into the soft leather at his elbow, her hand delving into the gap running along the length of his plackart. “Do you want to talk about about the letters, or the lyrium? We do not have much time, but if that is what you need...”

“No,” he says with a frown, “and yes. I know we must, but I. Maker, I need to work. We need to work. I – I would prefer to...”

“My door will be open. Avail yourself,” she offers to him with a murmur, “or do not. Tis your choice.”

There it is again, that damnable, blinding ease. That red, soft thing in him that always stings in her company. 

The moment slips away on soft feet.

“To work, joli?” she murmurs under the heady sunlight, and for a moment she is cast in great stripes of branches that turn her face into something wholly foreign, and far too sharp.

“As circumstance demands,” he returns to her, a little note of regret pulling down the edges of his mouth.

“Circumstance?” Mirèio hums, a silver-bright grin on her face. “I should remind you that there are other things this table inspires in me aside from _work_.”

“Oh?” Cullen laughs, and then he is consumed by her, by the press of her fingers at the tender hollows behind his ears, by the bite of her teeth and the flick of her tongue. Devoured by the memory of her behind him, her iron-banded arms wrapped round his chest and his own plea on his lips. His mouth chases after hers, follows her heat and the heavy tread of her boots as she saunters away, that fine, rough-sweet chuckle on her too-red lips. 

Her teeth chase away shadows she does not know are there. 

“Two days.”

Cullen watches her circle round the wide oak table, gloved fingers dragging sharply in the silence, and her eyes fixed firm on him. The tilt of her mouth speaks of something fierce, something hungry, and that, that is what he has been waiting for, for seven miserable weeks. Waiting and wanting. Always waiting and wanting, it seems.

“I had hoped for more time,” she says with a flick of her tongue, pinning the pink firmly against white, “but alas, I was frustrated in that goal.”

“Were you, my lady?”

That earns him a snort, and Mirèio's eyes roll up, even as she sweeps her hand out as if to cast all the little, golden markers to the floor; as if she intends to wipe the oak clean, and put something better in place of all these thick, dark lines.

_Oh._

_Oh sweet, merciful Andraste._

“Did you think I forgot, joli?”

“No,” Cullen breathes, even as her words cut down into his chest, laying fire and want along his skin with a rough, squeezing force, “no I did not. I hoped not.”

Her fist knocks against the wood and she leans out far, her mouth full of a bristling, familiar promise. “One thought in particular occupied my mind most often.” 

Across the expanse, she watches him, watches a shiver work through his thick frame, watches the heat unfurl in his cheeks, the gold lace of his lashes flickering against pale skin. She aches for him, for the hitch in his breath and the music of his mouth, but there is no time.

There is never any time.

This will have to do for now.

“And which thought was that, Mirèio?” Oh, oh but she's been gone so long, and they'd not finished anything. Not settled anything. Not had enough. Not begun. And even now, Cullen knows this will not end as he wants it to end, as either one of them desires for it to end. 

This is not the moment she pushes him down – pushes his cheek to the cold wood and bares his body to the air – her hands and her teeth and her fingers digging against his skin, circling around his cock. This is not the moment she finally slides those fine fingers between his legs to work him open, curling and teasing, while his mouth leaves wet trails of saliva across the borders of Ferelden and Orlais. 

It is not going to end like that, not today.

“I cannot think but for my desire.”

Her circling is a slow, maddening drag against his skin, the noise of her boots and her sword and the low bur of her voice painting heat across his frame as she draws nearer. 

Cullen finds the air gone out of his lungs, finds himself bent as Mirèio was only a moment ago, leaning hard against the wood. Her shadow falls over him, the crackle of her magic pushing that familiar stone down his throat, and for a moment he cannot meet her eyes; she makes a disapproving click with her tongue, snapping a hand out to yank his chin up. 

There is nothing gentle in her gaze. 

“I cannot think of aught else, in this fucking room, save for what you shared with me while you were between my legs.” She curls her fingers tighter, the tip of her nail pressing against the soft pink of Cullen's lower lip. His gaze wavers again, and she holds him firm, sighs under the shivering, breathless moan that eases past his lips. “I thought of ruining those clasps on your plackart, of pushing you down, spreading you open, my hand between your legs and my fingers in your mouth, just so that your howling does not draw attention to your state of undress. I wouldn't even mind of you drew blood.”

The sharp nail at his lip becomes her hot palm, and Cullen breathes against her skin, open-mouthed and sucking in the grain of earth, and the sear of her green magic. His lips are moving of their own accord, but there is nothing quite so well formed as words on his tongue. More a plea, more a litany of pleas that begin and end with _now, why not now, please_. 

“Is that what you want from me, Cullen?”

There is only laughter on his tongue. Only a fine, cutting _wanting_.

“Yes. As well you know.”

She drifts away.

“Mirèio!” is half a moan and half a plea on his lips. 

“Remember, joli, something hard for something soft,” is her reply. 

Cullen frowns, pinches the bridge of his nose and breathes against the sudden sourness in his guts. 

“We have work to do, and it is so ugly I do not know how take the sting out of it.” From across the table, she watches his shoulders hunch, his fists tightening under her reminder. None of this will be easy; none of this will be clean, or straightforward, or simple. What they are attempting to do is madness, but she will not be dissuaded. Not now. Tis much too late for that.

“So,” Cullen speaks with a shiver on his tongue, “what do you propose, Mirèio? Were, Maker, were the mines as terrible as you made them sound?” Nothing in him wants to hear this, nothing in him wants to hear just how low his brothers and sisters have fallen. But that is a cowardly, ignorant thing to do, and he cannot stick his fingers in his ears as if he were a child and shout away the evidence of all that the Order has allowed itself to become. 

He did that once before, and he is still a ruin for all his choices therein. 

Eyes open.

Her laughter is quiet, thin. “We get through this as quickly as we can. And when we are done, you will tell me why your gloves smell of oranges. Trade with me, joli. We start with something ugly, and we finish with something good.”

A hot, sudden clench of heat works its way through his frame and Cullen's mouth slants, pulls as crooked as hers. “Andraste's teeth, woman, you are so strange.” He has not the space left to him to be ashamed she'd noticed, that she'd caught her own scent on his skin. 

“Aye,” Mirèio hurls back with an inelegant snort, “aye that I am. Are you just discovering so now, Cullen?”

“Hardly.”

“Good. Because,” she continues with a sweep of her hand, “you should know I cannot do this, any of this, if I must always be the Inquisitor. You asked me to be honest with you, and I will endeavour to be that with you, always.”

“Mirèio.” There is something terribly sharp in his throat, something very piercing that drags through his lungs with a hard, cutting edge.

Her smile is wholly quiet now, wholly small and fiercely hopeful. 

Cullen has no map for any of this, no understanding of where his feet will carry him, where his choices will lead him. None. For once, that is not such an awful, unwelcome thought. 

“We'll start with the templars,” he offers to her, to the tall, unmoving tower of stone, “and then, yes, I will tell you why – why my gloves smell of oranges.”

One sharp, dark brow lifts, and Mirèio regards him with a bit of shock wed firmly to a steady welcome. 

“Ah,” and his tongue stills, lodging firmly behind his teeth, “did you think I would be unwilling to share?” 

Her reply is to set the first marker: the mine in Sahrnia. “This one was the worst. I did not have the numbers to launch an assault, and every day we delay marshalling our forces to assault this place is another day more lyrium flows from this pit. de Chevin is here because I need him to act as a bridge to the Orlesian forces we must gather to take this shit hole.”

“Do you have a plan in mind?” Cullen asks, even as she begins to pace once more. “Suledin Keep is an old fortress, and the region surrounding it is well known for disquiet. Why was de Chevin there?”

Her voice circles, echoes, words as clipped as the jingle in her tread. 

“An old debt, apparently,” Mirèio laughs. “And he has effectively been exiled for some terrible faux paux he committed that reflected rather poorly on the Empress. The Keep worries me, there is something twisted lurking behind those stones. The air around this place is discordant, harsh, almost oily.”

“Demons,” Cullen supplies, lips twisting up into a rictus of rage coiled against an old fear. 

Another marker thuds down: an outpost near the border of the Wilds. “That one was full of horrors. This corruption is spreading quickly, and there are fewer and fewer who appear human at all. I am concerned that the longer we hunt for their source, the stronger they will grow.”

“You fear if we dally at Halamshiral, there will be consequences?” 

Another marker drops down, and Cullen watches the whole terrible string of red pour over the map, over his homeland, over Orlais, over the coast along the Marches.

“Yes,” is a distant, brittle reply. 

She's drifting again, her voice sliding in and out of his attention, until her arms come round him, until her breath is a gentle rushing at his ear. 

The moment stretches, and there is only an abiding quiet between them: the noise of one breath layered over the other. And then her teeth nip at his earlobe, her heat laid sudden and swift against his back, the sting bright against the muddle of her voice and her hands; Cullen cannot mask the hitch in his breath.

It is easy, so damnably easy to welcome her: to settle into the weight of her touch.

“As of now I've only the letter from the Emerald Graves. I know there is something going on in Sahrnia, but the Red Knights have been far too quiet for my taste. I fear they are waiting for something.” 

“I agree.” Cullen shakes his head, puts his teeth through the rage and the fear that creeps along his skin. “These things are not templars, not anymore, but they are led by a templar. Should they go on the offensive, should they begin to strike out a civilian holdings, we will be bogged down. It will be open war far worse than anything we saw when the Temple fell.” The arm around his waist does not falter, does not loosen, and that calls up a strange, immeasurable gratitude: a sensation he cannot dismantle, or sort away. The sort of feeling that burrows; a thing digs and digs until it has made itself a home in the red spaces of his chest. 

Beneath the red wax threads and the sprawling, mid-morning light, Cullen leans into her, and Mirèio tucks his head under her chin, a little hum caught in her throat. He's never had someone touch him so readily before: with such easy, unasked for care.

Another marker, the last marker.

The string is complete, and though there are curious, blank patches of territory, the line suggests one thing: the road to Samson is through Suledin Keep. Through Sahrnia. But the arrow of corruption points yet draws out beyond Sahrnia, points to out past the glittering of heart of Val Royeaux; there is something in the wilds of Northern Orlais.

“You will need at least fifty soldiers to take that Keep,” Cullen mutters, staring down at the ugly mess on the map. He does not enjoy the thought of sending her off to assault a Keep, a mine and a little village full of terrified Orlesian villeins all on her lonesome. 

“That many?” she huffs. 

“Who will you take, aside from my soldiers?” he hums, wraps his hands over her forearm.

“Bull, Dorian, Sera,” Mirèio sighs. “Possibly Cassandra and Varric as well.”

There is a thin, brittle grin on his lips. “Am I free to give you a list of those best suited to accompany you?”

“Yes,” she murmurs, her breath ghosting over the shell of Cullen's ear, watching the reddened skin at the nape of his neck prickle beneath her attentions. 

Her hands uncurl from around his waist and Cullen feels her shift, feels her tug at him.

“Around,” she laughs, “turn around joli. Let me see your face.”

Watching another with such intimacy is always strange, always a hard thing. One errant thought, one stray idea, and the person watching will see, will guess, will pluck it out and wonder what has passed between in silence. 

Mirèio watches a hesitant grin creep across the shorter man's face and she reaches down, knots her fingers into his and brings his hand between their bodies. 

Beneath her attentions Cullen stiffens, the first touch of pink spreading at the ridge of his nose. She makes a noise in the back of her throat, brings his fingers to her mouth and bites down even as Cullen's startled groan strikes across her neck. The glove comes away slowly, slowly, and she curls her free hand in his belt, holds him steady.

“Mirèio,” is a hush, is a needful prickle against her skin. 

The weight of his armour is unbearable, is an affront to the Maker, and Cullen wants it off, wants it gone even as the glove on his hand drops to the floor between them, even as Mirèio drags his fingers closer to her mouth, to her nose. 

She breathes in deep; breathes out with a hard, bristling snap of air.

Cullen freezes, stifles a moan under his tongue when Mirèio presses her nose into the flat of his palm, fingers seeking out the skin at his wrists.

“So, joli,” she speaks, voice tight as a wire and too-hot in her mouth, “why do your gloves smell like oranges?”

“Ah,” leaves his mouth with about as much intelligence and charm as a knock-kneed stripling. A red flush spreads across his cheeks, and he gropes for better words. Words that aren't going to fall awkwardly off his tongue. _Because I missed you. Because I was weak. Because I am a fool. Because it was an indulgence I should not have allowed myself._

No. None of that.

And then she's moving away to stand behind him, drawn up to her full height, her grip on his naked wrist little better than a hard ring of iron. Every inch of her torso laid flush against his back.

Cullen would like to think he knows her ways well enough by now to understand that she is not angry. To understand, from the lilt in her voice and the rough hitch in her chest, that he's done something pleasing. Something she enjoys.

That makes him dizzy; threads him through with satisfaction, within longing. 

He should tell her why. 

“No words, hm?” Mirèio chuckles, rocking ever so slightly against Cullen's back, pushing his hand down onto the table. That earns her a little hiccup of a gasp, and if her teeth aren't drawing blood from her own lips than she's gone mad with want and this man truly has been the death of her. 

Cullen laughs, sudden and sharp, and says: “Because it was strange to be in your rooms, alone, and not have the scent of oranges.” It is the best he can manage – the least awkward, shameful thing to tell her.

“Did you touch yourself while your fingers smelled like me?” It costs her greatly to let those words leave her without wrapping her hands behind the hollows of his knees, without hefting him up to lay him out flat over the oak and the markers, beneath the tree roots and the red, hissing wax. 

“No.” Cullen hisses, finds a familiar, too-wide grin stretching across his face. “I – I thought it was too much. Too far.”

“Pity,” she returns with a grin, pushing further, bending him down and drawing his hand farther away, splaying his fingers out over the Waking Sea, “I would have enjoyed that thought very much.”

“Oh,” he breathes. Her grip is hard, hard enough to push his bones together, and the weight of her at his back is an ache he cannot take apart, cannot understand save that he wants. Needs. Without thinking, he pushes up into her, into the scant inches between them. “Not that I did not want to, Mirèio.”

She stills above him, around him.

“I did. I sat in that chair, in your chambers, and thought of nothing else,” he chokes out, red seeping down to his neck, to his chest, “but I knew it would not be enough. Not any more.”

“Cullen.” She says his name as she were tasting it, peeling it apart to draw something sweeter from its shape than any other might have sought before her. As if only her tongue could curl around it, as if only her teeth could bite down and devour.

“I told you,” and her free hand is roaming, seeking against buckles and laces and the thick belt at his waist, “I told you Mirèio, that I wanted more than just your hands. Did you think I would be satisfied with my own?”

She laughs; she laughs and she laughs, and all the world narrows down, folds in under the shadows above their heads and the hissing drip of wax; sinks under the dusty warmth of the sun pouring in through the high windows and the rush of their breathing.

“Soon enough, that will be very true, joli.”

He groans, heaves against her iron. 

She leans down, brings her lips to the pink of his ear and breathes, speaks: “I know you want this, Cullen. Ask me, as you wanted to before, all those months ago. Ask me for it.” 

“Push me down,” he whispers, though it shades into a plea, just on the last, little note, “hard.”

“Oh, joli,” Mirèio croons, “as you wish.” Beneath her she can feel him tense, feel him curve and strain, and there is such power there, such strength, it snatches at her restraint. Makes her clench. Makes her burn. 

Cullen's breath is tangled up, all red and wanting and curling, and then her hand is knocking at the centre of his stole, where the points of his shoulder blades are beneath the silverite skin; her hand is pushing him down, and he is calling to her.

“Mirèio.”

The doors rattle, and a voice calls from the other side, just as the wood begins to groan.

Mirèio pulls away with such speed it takes every scrap of his not inconsiderable personal restraint to hold back a bellow of frustration he finds clawing at the back of his throat. He's breathing like a courser set through its paces, knees weak and soft, and strung through with the sort of anger that often ends with his throwing knives buried to the hilt in a straw-man's skull. 

“Commander? I have those reports you requested. Sister Leliana informed me you were here.”

And then she's chuckling softly, an apology on her red bow mouth, and Cullen has had just about enough of _that_. Her hands tug him up, and he bats them away, the bear and the hart wrinkling under his grip as he fists his hands into the front of her tunic.

“I am growing very tired of hearing that word from your lips, Mirèio.” His fingers pull tighter, grip harder. “Very tired.”

“Ah,” she replies with a that clever, cutting grin on her sharp face, “but tis not my fault this time, joli. That rather dubious honour is yours.”

She returns with the reports and a hard, unhappy frown on her face and he remembers: he still hasn't asked her of the letter.

"Mirèio?"

“None of this is my right, Cullen. I have no right to do any of this.” Every syllable is hard, harsh, unbending, and beneath her hands, against her frame, she feels him stiffen. Leliana's whimsical scrawl on the parchment comes at her like the bright flat of a blade, and suddenly it is as if they are both returned to that cold night on the battlements. Suddenly it is as if they are stood before one another and made strange again, made cautious.

"The next ruler of Orlais is going to get their crown from the hands of a fucking sheep-herder. Madness. All of it. I have no right to do that. No right to make these choices."

Words smash against one another under Cullen's leaden tongue. He hasn't a thought what to tell her. What could he tell her?

The markers stretch out across the map, dire shadows cast against velum and ink, and it is suddenly very had to find the light in all this mess. 

Shadows upon shadows, and no time to let either of them breathe.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, you know what they say about tensions right?
> 
> Sorry. So sorry.
> 
> Next chapter has porn. 
> 
> So does the one after that. 
> 
> Please think of that gif of the Avenue Q muppet shouting out the window about porn when you read this note.
> 
> As always, comments and kudos are thoroughly enjoyed.
> 
> So sorry.


	15. her fair neck round about:

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> >:3c
> 
> Do enjoy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I should like to warn you that I use the word cunt, but not as a slur. If that is terribly offensive to you, please let me know, as I am open to changes. I just can't bring myself to use the word pussy. Sorry. I laugh. You laugh. It makes it sound like baby's first smut.

~ * ~

Standing just beyond the line of tents in the Hinterland's forward camp, under the bitter, blue cast of pre-dawn light, Cullen rubs at his eyes, chafes his hands together to call up some little warmth. Spring may be lurking in the earth, but it's far, far away from this muddy stretch of land. 

Maker but he does not want to be here. 

“Commander!” Dennet calls, and Cullen turns his attention to the man. “I have the carriages ready, ser.”

“Very good,” he murmurs, casting his attention out to the line of delicate looking Orlesian monstrosities. Madame de Fer had been quite clear in her instructions regarding their approach to Halamshiral, and now this is the result: a veritable fleet of frightfully expensive carriages that look better suited to the streets of Val Royeaux than to the rough countryside they will be traversing. 

He's not seen Mirèio for more than a span of a half-turning of the glass in two days. Two days. Whether it was the mountain of appointments with Madame de Fer's tailors, or the hours spent with Josephine, or the fact that he could not bring himself to intrude upon her once the sun had set, he is unsure, but there has been too much silence between them.

Not enough time. 

Never enough time.

Just over his shoulder, Cullen hears Sera snort, spit. 

“Ugh, well isn't this the most posh-awful thing you've ever seen,” she grunts, grips her bow tight and spits again, as if trying to clear away something sticky from between her teeth. All these months with the Inquisition and Bear's not been a highborn snot, not once. Bear's been a pair of feet dangling over the roof; a friend. 

Cullen hums, adjusts the leather of his sword-belt, kicks his toes further into his boots. 

“Ya think Inky ordered these things?”

“No,” comes tumbling out of his mouth with a little more force than necessary, “no I'm quite certain the Inquisitor did not.”

“That ain't what I asked ya, General Uptight.”

He frowns, pinches the bridge of his nose. “No, Sera, I am absolutely sure she did not order these.”

“Good,” the little archer barks before turning on her heel to saunter off, her laughter clinging to Cullen's shoulders even as she begins to make her way back to the camp. 

“And it is Commander Rutherford,” he calls to her retreating back.

“Nah, Cully-wully,” is her reply carried on by the wind and the camp smoke. “Nah it ain't. Don't worry, Inky'll get you sorted out.”

_That woman is Mirèio's friend_ , he must remind himself. _Maker only knows why, but Mirèio would take a strip from my hide if I spoke ill of her._ She calls the archer abejita – little bee – and it is a fair, honest name indeed. Sera stings, quick as bee, and then flies off on her merry way, utterly unconcerned with the barb she's left behind.

“Oh dear.” A jingling laugh. “There's that look again. No taste for the sunlight of late, my friend?”

“I did not miss you in the slightest, ser,” Cullen mutters. Dorian's little silver embellishments catch the weak light filtering in through the heavy sprawl of the trees, and he finds he cannot look over long at the pointed, knowing glint in the man's eyes. 

“She got a letter from her former lover, Cullen. I assure you, it's not the end of the world. Nothing quite so dramatic.”

Suddenly, the mud beneath his boots is terribly interesting; there's something wickedly sharp stuck in between his ribs, and despite their teasing, despite the heat of the war-room and the weight of her hands on his back, at his neck, on his shoulders, Cullen cannot take apart the voice in his head that tells him he has made himself a bed he does not want to lie in. 

He has not told her enough, has not pushed hard enough, and now her reluctance is once more tangled up with his own. Now there is a letter and a mile of uneasy, purposeful silence between them not yet dispelled. 

The leather of his glove is cold against his hot face. “Mage business,” he mutters. “She called it mage business. What – what in the Maker's name does that mean?” His hands twitch, flitting about like nervous birds. He feels restless; stung. Pulled too thin.

Dorian frowns, steps a little nearer; he thinks of touching the man, thinks of offering something, anything, to clear away that familiar, brightly polished misery. Seven weeks is not so great a span of time, but it is when he does not know who has crawled into what pit, or why. He did enough stumbling around blind, drunk and hurtful to those who might have loved him in Vyrantium and Minrathous. He will not do that here. Most especially considering that Mirèio has not told him anything of the many letters that passed between herself and Cullen. 

“She hasn't drawn a line like that in months, Dorian. It's not that Asha wrote her a letter, I know they write to one another. I know that. I'm not some jealous child, and she would never tolerate such nonsense from me.”

Dorian hums, follows the line of Cullen's distant, troubled gaze out to the ridge of the trees, to the little mote of pale light hiding between the branches. 

Bull has been a steady hand at his back all morning, a quiet sprawl in their tent. Orlais is a pit, and neither of them relishes the task of wading around its sharper precipices. These southerners have such a low, ignorant opinion of magic, of mages, of what Tevinter is, down to its core, and Dorian feels less than capable enough to endure these lashes than he first thought. The Maker- forsaken frogs will be no kinder to the Bull. Possibly, they will be worse.

A happy thought it is not: that perhaps he has simply leapt from one wretched prison to another. 

“Whatever you speak to me, Cullen, I will hold it in confidence.” 

Cullen sighs, pins his frown into a manageable sourness with his palm. “I am unsure I can explain it, my friend. Even in my own head, it sounds foolish. Petty.” The heated churn of nervousness sits heavily in his guts; he does not know if it just the letter, or if it is the letter and her silence, or if it is all of that piled atop the long road to Orlais, to the Winter Palace.

Maker, he does not want to do this. She is right. It is wrong. All of this is wrong. What gives any of them the right to meddle in the affairs of an empire the likes of which House Valmont has created? What gives any of them the right to circle round like vultures over a warm corpse? To decide the fate of a nation before noonday meal as if it were a a little thing? An empire that has endured for centuries, and four people nearly a hundred miles from the seat of that power argued in a room amongst themselves as to the fate of the entire Maker forsaken thing. 

It's ludicrous. Mad. Foolish. Wrong.

Orlais is not just a Throne, it is also her people. No natural right exists in any member of the war-council to decide so much for so many.

_And yet you would see the Circles flourish again?_ That voice belongs to Leliana, to Mirèio. _Or do you fear what will come if they do not? Is that not the same? For what is a Circle other than a place to decide so much for so many._

He needs to _speak_ to her.

“Nonsense dearest,” Dorian huffs, rapping his knuckles on the silverite of Cullen's vambrace. “Do let me be the judge of that.” He's had quite enough of Cullen's nervous chewing; if the man picks at himself any harder, there will be blood churned into the mud beneath their feet.

“She's never called something 'mage business' before, Dorian.” Frustration strings through his words, makes them clipped, tight. “We haven't fought over magic in months. Not since she brought the rebel mages to us. Not since she told me, in no uncertain terms, that I was to keep my former templars away.”

“Oh yes,” Dorian replies with a hearty chuckle, “I do remember that. Never were any abominations, eh amicus?”

“Please don't remind me,” Cullen huffs. “I think that was quite possibly the only moment wherein I felt the distinct possibility of her fist connecting with my jaw.”

“Furious!” Dorian crows. “She was in such a rage that night. Spitting and hissing like a cat. Or,” he laughs, “like a bear prodded with a rather large stick.”

Cullen feels one of his eyebrows lift, the corners of his mouth turning down hard.

“I fed her good wine from Carastes until she passed out in the library. Never did mention it again. Clearly,” he gives the man a rough shake, fingers digging into the leather at Cullen's elbow, “she got over that well enough, so do try not to fret overmuch.”

“I never did tell her I was wrong.”

Dorian's little hum of frustration breaks the un-gentle quiet. “Have you, at all, discussed magic with her?” 

“Yes.”

Dorian waits the man out, catches the little blister of hesitation that bites Cullen's _yes_ far too short for honesty.

“No,” Cullen huffs, sour and stung. “I have asked, once, what her magic is like, what it is to her. She answered. She answered me honestly, but I did not know how to respond.” He pauses, digs and turns up useless platitudes. “We – I did not have the time to discuss it further.”

“Well,” the altus offers, “I would suggest you try again, my friend.” Hesitation pushes clean through him, clean as an arrow between the ribs. This may be too much, too far. This may not be his right, nor his place. “You southerners have a terrible reputation outside your own borders when it comes to the subject of magic. There is a reason she and the Grand Enchanter barred your Templars from the teaching spaces.”

Cullen opens his mouth, finds a retort on his tongue. “I would remind you: no soldier here is a Templar, Dorian. We do not serve the Chantry, we do not serve the Order.” 

_We serve her_ , lives beneath the underside of his tongue. _I serve her._

Dorian sighs, ticks his fingers against Cullen's vambrace as if he were plucking strings. “That is a hard thing for many to accept, my friend. You have been rather vocal in distancing yourself from the Order, but you are only one. Take myself as an example: no matter how much I remain my steadfast, dazzling, charming self, many will see me as some mad, power-hungry magister. Blood under my nails and all. No matter what I do.”

“I – I had not.” The knot grows, tightens. “I had not thought in such terms, Dorian. I can see how there might be.” Words gather on his tongue, tie themselves into the soft flesh until he is a stinging mess under their silence. Dorian's hand settles on his shoulder, comfort rough and unasked for. Cullen strips out his flinch as ruthlessly as he does the words that will not leave his tongue.

“Do not be so upset, amicus,” Dorian carries on; he may either spare Cullen a little hurt now, or let these two fools stumble on to greater ruin. A hard choice indeed. “Tis hardly some terrible error on your part. These southern lands are not known for being a bastion of magical knowledge and learning. Quite the dark, dour reputation I'm afraid.”

“Is, is being a southerner truly such a black mark? You make it sound as if mages beyond the south think we're all beasts.”

“They do.” Dorian's reply falls like a stone to the mud, snapping Cullen's mouth shut. “Beasts of the southern wilds. In Qarinus, we used to discuss southerners at symposia you know. We would laugh, tittering on about this or that ludicrous rumour. Templars do what in the south? Surely not!” Dorian cries, sotto voiced and sharper than ever. “And no matter how pleasantly drunk we got, it always turned so quiet afterwards. There is a reason you'll not see a Nevarran mage travel from Cumberland.”

“And Rivain?” Cullen asks, hushed under the lathe of Dorian's tongue. 

“Please,” the altus replies with a snort, “nugs should sprout wings and fly before a Rivaini mage leaves Dairsmuid.”

“She was trained in Rivain,” Cullen murmurs, quiet enough to be mistaken for a whisper. “She told me that much.”

“I know.”

He looks up from the mud, a hiss on his tongue, red creeping down his neck. Again. Again and again, he is reminded: there are a few so gathered here who know Mirèio far better than he does. One she trusts wholly, freely. 

“If you want her mage business, Cullen, you are going to have to ask her for her mage business," Dorian says, bitter grin flying quick as a bird across his sunny face. “As you are no longer a templar, she might just answer you.”

That's as fine a rebuke as any he's had before. “Did I just get scolded by a Tevinter slave owner?” If there were any retort in him, it's a useless, shattered thing now; Dorian is right. 

“Yes you did.” Dorian claps him on the back hard enough to rattle his armour. “Take your lumps like the rest of us, Commander. Big, strong knight that you are, I'm certain you'll come through just fine.” 

Dorian walks away, head high and laughter thick on the wind.

Cullen finds his fists clenched tight against his sides, teeth jammed together hard enough to send a jolt of pain through his jaw. 

The worst of it is, Dorian is right: Mirèio has no reason to trust him with the details of her mage recruits, with any mage business whatsoever. He has not shown her any sign that he is wishes to be included in what goes on with the mages under the Inquisition's care. He has not made any effort to ask about the mages beyond that first argument about abominations, beyond that day in the snow. He'd meant what he said: the little ones were welcome in the yard. But that is not enough. Not nearly enough it would seem. 

An awful thought digs at him as like claws into a soft underbelly; spills new fears into his hands like red gore; leaves him breathless and hollowed. _Have I cleaved too close to the shadow of Kirkwall? Has my silence been taken as disinterest? Fear? Apathy?_

_Why should she tell me anything when I have made so little effort to ask?_

As if summoned, the bright music of her sword rings in his ears and Cullen stills. The stone unfurls in his guts and he must scrabble madly for the little, cutting pieces of his thoughts that are now shouting, biting in his mind. Quick as he can, he crushes the new, unwelcome realizations away from her sight. 

Now is not the time. There is never to be any time, it would seem. 

Cassandra is standing just at her shoulder, a frown as sour as bitterroot on her face. “Is this nonsense truly necessary, Inquisitor?”

Behind her are the rest of her travelling companions, all of them stamping and shuffling and murmuring to each other, rubbing sleep from their eyes and jostling for space. The noise of so many weapons and bits of heavy armour gathered together is very loud, even against the bustle of the camp.

Mirèio laughs. “Sheep-herders do not argue with courtiers of Madame de Fer's caliber, Seeker.”

“So one of my lessons has taken root after all, darling?” Vivienne smiles, gentle as the sharp end of her staff. “Such miracles in abundance this morning. Whatever will we do with this unexpected blessing?”

“Wait and see, Madame,” Mirèio replies. “The Maker is a patient sort.” 

Sera cackles right alongside Josephine's merry chuckle. 

Cullen scoffs, feels a sense of dislocation sharp as a bone suddenly pushed out of place; his shoulders ache, and there is a heavy knot in the pit of his guts. “You'd think we were all being marched off to the gallows.” 

“I would rather,” Cassandra replies. 

“Aw c'mon now,” the Bull interrupts, “let's all remember what's really important here.”

“And what is that, you great lummox?” Dorian snips.

“Mountains of fancy Orlesian food and an opportunity to piss in the punchbowl.”

“I beg your pardon?” Dorian's voice flexes high and there is a noise: skin being slapped, followed by the Bull's thick, grating chuckle. “I have to drink out of that punch bowl.”

“The Empress is a collector of Falernian, certified grand cru vintage,” Josephine interrupts. “I should think you'll have no difficulties acquiring a better selection, Master Pavus.”

“Falernian, you say?” A thousand leagues from the couches and the cups and the idle, cutting tongues of his countrymen, and even the haughtiest of southerners prefer to drink like Tevinter nobles do. Hilarious. 

“Fine vintages aside, I must agree with Cassandra. Death would be kinder than three days in Halamshiral. I would rather face a hoard of demons. I would rather go naked against a company of giants, or a dozen dragons and their hatchlings, than deal with these people.” There's not a happy thought in her head; Halamshiral will be filled to its gold teeth with a morass of brutish, intolerant, cruel, narrow-sighted fools, and she will have to endure every one of them. One by one. Hour by hour. 

Tis hard to watch her from the corner of his eye, but Cullen knows the smile on her face is as genuine as the laughter in her mouth, which is to say not genuine at all. There is a particular sharpness in her mouth, and it shows itself in the dart of her tongue between her sharper teeth. This is what gives her away. He wants nothing more than to know why.

She has always been so generous, so open-handed. So much shared out under honey'd quiet or raucous laughter that now he finds her careful avoidance as like a sore in the back of his mouth; his tongue will not stop prodding. 

“There we go, Boss. Knew you were the fun one.” 

“Please,” Cassandra huffs, “as if you have not done exactly that already, Inquisitor. Need I remind you of the giant and the dragon on the Storm Coast?”

“Ah.” Mirèio hums, covering her too-sharp grin with her gloved hand. “Well yes, I suppose I have faced worse than a room full of nobles.”

The laughter on his tongue is wholly foreign, nigh unwelcome, but Cullen cannot keep the words behind his teeth. Something must be said, and it is better this than anything else. “So long as we keep the Inquisitor away from the bread rolls, I'm sure we'll manage just fine.”

“Bread rolls?” Josephine frowns, sliding through the crowd to thrust a cloth wrapped package and a bundle of parchment into the Inquisitor's hands. “Whatever do bread rolls have to do with...” 

Mirèio chokes back her reply, bites her tongue to pieces to kill the wild laughter in her chest. 

Quick as anything, Cullen is red to the roots, red down to his neck. _She didn't tell anyone that story?_ he panics, thoughts rushing round in a clamour as his lungs struggle for air. _Oh Maker, she hasn't told anyone that story. Just me._

“Nothing princesa,” she manages, smothering her grin with the palm of her hand. “Nothing at all.”

“Oi,” Sera barks, “are we missin' a quality joke 'ere? Inky been keeping secrets?”

“Bristles I'm hurt,” Varric laughs. “I thought we agreed to share. I tell you all my good stories, and you tell me yours. The book will never get written if you leave all the good shit out.” He spares a glance at Curly, and finds the man as red as the last time they all gathered together. Sure as shit is a good thing he's always enjoyed puzzles; awful fucking bit of luck, that. “Gotta be honest, even when you're full of shit.” 

“Oh, Messere Tethras,” Mirèio chortles, “I assure you there's more than enough material already. Remember what I told you about Lomeryn?”

Varric tips his chin up, finds an uncomplicated, roaring laughter waiting in his throat. Puzzles in puzzles; the best kind of story. “See? Now that's what I'm talking about. Who doesn't want to read about the mighty Inquisitor Trevelyan crawling naked, out of the window of...” 

Mirèio wheezes, snaps a hand down over Varric's open mouth. “Get into the carriages, all of you. Any more of this incessant chittering and we'll be late.”

“No, absolutely not. I want to hear the rest!”

“Naked, Boss? Did it involve a redhead?” Bull says, lips quirking sharply. He's just about got her number, but she's been proving a damn tricky knot to unravel. Almost as tricky as Dorian. 

“Not that time,” Mirèio hisses, shoving at Varric's shoulders.

Bull's barking retort of laughter is loud, even weighed against Sera's bee-sting chuckling. “Ever consider being a mercenary after this shit settles down? You and me, the Chargers, we'd have some real fun. You been to the Sparrow-Lark?” 

“Bull.” Her smile is as red as a wolf's snout. “Get in one of the carriages. Now.”

“Hoo shit,” Bull snorts, “we're getting drunk when we get back. You've been holding out on me Boss. I'm hurt. ” 

Cassandra and Varric make their way first, and then a river of voices and squelching mud go flowing past he and Mirèio; not for the first time, Cullen is grateful for the rush, for the laughter, for the numbering of himself amongst their ranks. 

And then her hands are prodding him along. Her teeth at his ear, she says with a bright, uncomplicated smile: “If I were you, I would make haste for the last carriage in the line. I am in no mood for anyone's company save yours.”

To say that he _runs_ would be a wild exaggeration, but to say that his pace is leisurely would be an outright lie. Her boots clip the backs of his heels and Cullen finds a wildly inappropriate cackle hiding behind the clench of his teeth. Sadly, it comes out an awkward, disorganized mess behind his glove: a great tangle of nervous, frustrated, and all too eager.

“Shouldn't laugh like that in public, Commander,” Mirèio chuffs, resisting the urge to reach out and pinch. “Some might consider it beneath a man of your station.” 

“How fortunate no one is around to hear such things then, Inquisitor,” Cullen tosses back, finds the sprawl of her merry grin, and bites down on the shiver under his tongue. 

It takes only a moment before his hands are on the ornate, delicate looking scoop of a handle, and then he's yanking the door open with such force its gilt hinges rattle dangerously. Patience fled, Cullen flings himself into the plush, well-lined interior, aware of nothing save Mirèio's shadow and the weight of his armour. 

The door snaps shut behind him as he arranges himself on the seat; her cut-glass chuckle skitters along his spine, mirth loud in the muslin silence. 

She folds her long frame into the seat with a deliberate neatness, a bundle of reports balanced in her lap; the leather of her boots climbs up, touches her thighs, and Cullen finds few words in his mouth. His tongue is dry, pushed awkwardly behind his teeth. Her gaze is sharp-toothed, gloved fingers curved against her knees like talons.

“Beneïda demà, joli.”

A grin lifts the corners of his mouth, tongue loosening at her welcome. All this quiet has knotted him up. Bent his neck. It's an odd thing to carry around, this breed of uncertainty, but he'd rather have this than nothing at all. 

“Mirèio,” is a gentle note in the plush silence. 

Her quiet stretches; Cullen waits her out, fingers itching to skim over the sprawl of her legs, dip into the sharp curve of her hips. He wants to put his mouth on the fine leather of her boots, peel them from her thighs with his teeth. He wants his mouth on the softness of her skin, to delve into the wet heat between her legs, taste her, musky and sour, on his tongue. What will she sound like? Is she all teeth? Rough, snapping noises held in the curve of her chest? He wants to know what face she will wear in the moment of her release. He wants to see her, as she has seen him. 

The shining wealth of her braids drags softly over the seat, little copper bands glittering like bright coins in a sprawl of ink, as she leans forward; up goes her clever, cutting grin: silver bright and too-red. Despite the welcome in her mouth, there is a somber weight in her eyes. 

“Mirèio, whatever is the matter? Has something...” She darts out and Cullen jolts, the press of her lips knocking the rest of his words down the back of his throat, to the back of his mind. Her teeth bite, nip, chase, and he chuckles against her, darts his tongue out to meet her sudden, messy need. 

“Forgive me,” she snaps, plucks at the pink of his lower lip to draw his sharpening noises between her teeth. “I have not had more than a moment for two days, and I had not intended to be so quiet with you.”

“Oh,” Cullen breathes out, and the little knot of thorns he has been carrying about under his ribs of late loosens just enough to push a better, more honest smile onto his face. Reaching up, he tangles his hands in her braids, her fingers digging into the fur on his shoulders. “Good,” is a bright, curling laughter shared in the little space left to them. 

He opens wide at her seeking, far too eager to catch his favourite noise of hers between his lips: the one that is only half a breath and mostly teeth. Her tongue eases in, hot against his own, curling into the hollows of his cheeks, along the roof of his mouth. The slide of their mouths lays gooseflesh along the nape of his neck, down his back, and he sucks on her tongue, leans hard into her hands. 

“Ara, ara,” Mirèio chuckles, even as Cullen swallows down her breath. “Where has all that steady patience of yours gone, joli?”

Cullen snorts, slips a little against the bench. “Do you honestly...”

The door handle rattles and Cullen nearly bites Mirèio's tongue in two. The heat of her mouth retreats and he curses loudly, hotly. 

Mirèio pulls away hard, turns to the window and finds Dorian face wide eyed and open-mouthed between the gilt edges of the frame. The door is already half open, the noise of the camp loud in the narrow space.

Dorian stands there dumbly, feet sinking into the mud. “Salve, amicii,” comes tumbling out from behind the stinging grin stretching his cheeks. 

Mirèio's hand snaps out, barely missing Cullen's nose, and her fingers close on the filigree handle. She gives a tug. 

Dorian frowns, tugs back, hides his ludicrous grin. “Ursa?”

Cullen groans, covers his face with his hands. “Maker, Dorian, have you no shame?”

“My my, Commander Rutherford, I would never have taken you for the sort,” Dorian chokes out, delight curling on his tongue. “This boldness I expect from her, but from you? Gerae, what is this world coming to? Well, perhaps coming is not the...”

“If it pleases you, cariñu, go away,” Mirèio hisses, tongue as sharp as ever. She tugs hard, and the door clicks shut again. 

“Rude,” is a distant, muffled sniff Cullen hears behind the shelter of his palms. The laughter he finds behind his teeth is stilted, nervous, too-bright. 

Neither dares move again until the line of carriages begins to trickle forward, the clamouring spear of the Inquisition and its banners eddying out towards the flat, slate-grey river of the Imperial highway. 

“Not even in a fucking carriage, eh, joli? Not a moment of peace.”

“It would seem not,” he laughs, turning his attention back to the wealth of Mirèio's braids and the slope of her shoulders. “As I have said before, my lady: no rest for the wicked.” Every useless inch between them is a wretched thing. A terrible thing. Her neck is a heated cord of steel beneath his palms, her laughter bright as the musical jingle of their swords. In the little, plush silence of the carriage, their armoured bodies are loud: too much the noise of silverite and steel. 

Leaning out until their foreheads meet, Mirèio knots her fingers in the bright wheat of Cullen's hair. Mouth silver'd and curling, she murmurs: “But which of us is wicked, joli?”

Her nose bumps against his own and Cullen breathes in deep of the scent of oranges and bitter herbs; leather and salt; dirt; Mirèio. Unbidden, he tips his chin up and the path of her nose curves down his cheek. So close. So warm. Pressed together like this – her broad shoulders and the knife-sharp splendour of her face all he can see – she is near flush to his skin, breath curling hot over his cheek, his jaw. Every breathe shared between them drags the heat of her mouth nearer still, and it is just as sweet as the sting of her nails. 

“Do you want an answer?” he asks, leaves his mouth open just so; wets his teeth with tip of his tongue. 

“No,” she laughs. “Not in the slightest.” Quick as the edge of a skinning knife, Mirèio dips her tongue against the pink of Cullen's lower lip, slides her open mouth down to nip at the sharp line of his jaw. The shiver of his breath is loud in her ears; his fingers pluck at her braids, tugging sharp and insistent. 

So fair; so sweet; so many colours; she wants to bite down, bite until the sweetness runs down her chin, down his. 

“Mirèio,” is a needful hitch beneath her fingers, her mouth.

Wood and axles groaning, their carriage jolts forward at last. Her mouth slips against his, dragging wetly across his cheek, and Cullen cannot abide this anymore. 

He finds the soft skin behind Mirèio's ears, curls his fingers at the nape of her neck; so little of her is soft, and every bit of skin he finds that is _soft_ is another fine, bright coin in his meagre purse. One little thing he may have for himself, because she wishes for him to have it. Gives it freely. With such easy, blinding generosity. 

“Please.”

She stills, and it is not hesitation in her steel-sharp gaze, but something else entirely. Something bright and quick, and built like the sly yowl of a fox. Her hands come up, arms dipping beneath his to press her fingers along the underside of his jaw, and even in the narrow space of the carriage he must rise to meet her. He wants nothing more than to part her lips, bite until the red of her mouth is a heated snarl that turns her pink tongue pale between the white of her teeth; he wants to linger in the wet softness of her cheeks until she is the very image of hunger, a hunger writ across the too-sharp splendour of her face by his hands and his mouth and his tongue alone. 

Her laughter is little and soft, a gentle touch against his hot cheeks, and he is leaning in to her, his hands on the sprawl of her shoulders and her fingers cutting sharp down his back. He shivers, pushes his nose into the hollow of her throat. 

“Shall we play a little game, joli?”

“A game?” bubbles up between his parted lips. “What sort of game, my lady?” She bites the word from his tongue, plucks each one from the back of his throat, hands digging sharp against the small of his back. “Will it let me,” he laughs, breathless against her talons, “let me see you? Taste you?”

His need pushes between her ribs, rough and unbending, and she does not know what to do with all this tender longing, this needful twinge in his mouth. It has been so long since she's wanted more than a night's pleasure, so long since she has given more of herself than her body. Years. And not with a southerner. Most especially not with a southerner. So it is, as she thought before, that she must throw caution to wind. Go on until some resistance is met.

“Arms out, joli. Take off your fur.”

They are past the point of preamble.

Tongue between her teeth, Mirèio says, with a heavy, burnished heat: “I will take your armour off. Be thankful I have no knife, or I would cut you out of it. It is wearisome to me, and, I think, to you as well.”

The groan waxing in the heat of his throat is redder than ever. What might he tell her other than _yes?_ She is right. He is tired of its weight, tired in ways that are not fit for the lightness of words.

Cullen raises his arms, holds himself out to her, knees splayed and breath tumbling rough and low from his chest. Her fingers clatter over the silverite, plucking at the buckles of his vambraces, at his gauntlets. The Lady's sword falls away, and quick as a hawk after a little heart in the grass Mirèio dips those ivory chipped talons of hers into the wealth of straps and buckles at his sides. 

“There are the rules. You will follow them.” Iron and fire. Tall and unbending, even in the velvet cloister of the carriage. “You will not cry out. I will have those noises for myself, they are not for the ears of others. You will choose a word. If you use that word, we will stop.”

Cullen breathes against her hands, under the sting of her tongue. “Yes.”

The noisy jangle of buckles being undone is loud in the silence, louder even than his own breathing. She is quiet, tight as a wire and twice as hot, but he grin on her mouth belies the whip-crack of her tongue. 

One, two hard tugs and he is free of the heavy plackart; he breathes against the weight of her hands, follows the twist of her torso, the sway of her slick braids: a man to water. Words clamour in his throat like a great host of little, fragile wings, thrumming loud in the narrow quiet. _Now_ hums under his tongue. _Now, now, now_.

“On your knees, joli.” And she is wholly sharp: red in edge and intent.

“Yes, my lady.”

Her hand snaps out, plucks at his chin. “No, Cullen, my name.”

“Mirèio.”

Her fingers trail down, nails dragging against the tender skin of his neck, his collarbones, to tangle in the laces of his tunic. He slides from the blue silk cushion, kneels before her, hands on either side of her thighs. Like this, they are so close every breath is loud, long, curling. Warm and weighted through on delicate strings. Her welcome is steel-bright, steel-sharp; his laces are still wrapped 'round her fingers, and every jolt from the carriage pulls them a little tighter round his throat.

“Mirèio,” is a trembling thing on his lips. “I – ” The tip of her tongue drags hot and wet along his lower lip, and the laces at his throat pull taut. He swallows, breath dragging sharp through his nose.

There is a long, long length of silk in her other hand as yellow as the banners of her House. The bright colour splashes between them, and Cullen reaches out, curls his fingers 'round the silk. In his too-warm palm the silk is a river of promise, cold and fine. He looks to her, hunts through her sharp face for her intention. 

“Yes or no?” laughs Mirèio. Cullen snorts, fists the silk in steady hands; he knows the rules; he knows she wants an answer. 

“Yes.” The silk is still cold, bits of its fine length catching on his callused palms, but he is hot, and hotter still. 

“Take the cushions from the seat, joli, and pile them at the door. I'll need the handle, and you'll need their softness. Remember, ff you wish to stop, if you are uncomfortable, if it is no longer what you want, you will use some word.” The shiver that unfurls under his skin is a fine thing indeed, sharp enough to pluck at the line of his shoulders, make him twitch. His laces are still tied 'round her fingers and she tugs at them, catches his thin gasp with her mouth.

She unwinds the laces and pats them down against Cullen's chest. “Go on.”

Grinning wide, Cullen shifts between Mirèio's legs, curls a hand over the leather covering her knee and reaches for the plump cushions Madame de Fer thought were necessary accoutrements in these Maker forsaken frivolities. Perhaps he should send her a thank you note. 

Turning his back to her, Cullen stacks the thick, beaded monstrosities atop one another despite the bouncing rattle of the wheels. Piled up like this, the odd nest is plush enough to spare him the unforgiving hardness of the carriage's floor. 

Nudging the last one in place, Cullen turns to Mirèio, watches her stillness over his shoulder: the yellow silk pools in her lap, her fingers picking at Scivias' straps, jingling buckles making merry noise in the quiet. 

Without thinking, he turns to her, bats her hands away. The soft, well-oiled straps slide between his fingers, and the whisper of leather against his skin sets heat spilling into his guts, the flush on his cheeks burning down to his throat. Her hands come up, dig into his hair, along the nape of his neck; she lets him work, fingers grasping, tugging, and the bright sting does nothing but stoke the hot twinge into a heady, stinging mess. 

Sword and harness gone, pushed aside, Cullen wraps his hands 'round her thighs, presses his nose to the leather at her knees. “Mirèio?”

The hand in his hair pulls hard, leather blunted nails scratching against his scalp. He moans, soft and low, open-mouthed against the cuff of her high boot. He wants to bite, to pull the leather from around her thighs with his teeth. 

_Now, now, now._

Mirèio chuckles, voice tangled thick in the back of her throat. “Maker, Cullen, don't use your teeth. You'll be working at those buckles 'til the sun sets.” 

Cullen snorts, grinning against the leather wrapped around her thighs. “Spoilsport.”

“If you insist,” she huffs, tucks her shivering tongue behind her teeth as his thick fingers hook into the first boot and pull, drag, tug until the creak of leather and the rushing of his breath is all she can hear in the plush carriage. “I should think your teeth better used for other things.”

The best Cullen can manage is a grunt as he grips the heel of her boot and tosses the offending article away. Running his hands back to the hollow behind her knee, he does the same to the other boot, aching and eager as the magnificent sprawl of her legs is made bare of leather. She makes no noise at the slow creeping of his fingers over her thighs, makes no sound as he knots his hands in the sliver flicker of her mail. 

“May I?”

Her only answer is a bare, regal nod. 

He tugs her forward, the Bear and the Hart wrinkling under the clench of his palms, and hefts her hauberk up, the mail sloshing noisily against the carriage floor. Her doublet follows right quick, Cullen cursing over sturdy knots and long ties. “Maker, why do you not wear mage robes, Mirèio?”

“Mage robes?” she laughs, bare throat flashing in the narrow slice of light pouring in from the window. “No. What would I do with mage robes? Tis awfully hard to do well in a fight dressed in little more than an enchanted nightgown.” 

“Dorian wears mage robes,” Cullen retorts, a frown tugging at the corners of his mouth; the disdain in her voice is hard to miss. 

“He does not,” Mirèio sniffs. “I make him wear light armour. Cuirass and all. Made him sweat like a nuggalope that first few weeks. Complained for days. Loudly, I might add.”

“Your pardon, but you did what?” 

“I spent several thousand gold refurbishing his collection of texts by Dihna Bint Sab'in, just to soothe his injured pride. Clever thing. He knows Mistress Josifen would prefer to hang him out the window by his ankles than indulge in his...”

Cullen pitches forward, yanks her doublet off her shoulders and hurls the garment away, finds her dressed as she was in the greenhouse: in all the silk and sheer cotton finery of an Antivan merchant-prince. Beneath his hands is a little black vest that sits snugly beneath her small, high breasts, and a familiar, blisteringly white shirt, voluminous sleeves pinned neatly at her wrists. Finding the silk threads of little songbirds and spindly mountain flowers under his rough fingertips, Cullen drinks her in whole: sprawled out beneath him, legs splayed wide and braids dragging like seaweed between them, she is more than he dared hope for. 

He'll not have another word from her mouth about someone else. “Nevermind,” he says with a hiss, “I've decided I do not care. Maker, I don't care, Mirèio.”

A great, bone shaking laugh cracks its way out of her chest, broad shoulders rolling beneath Cullen's grip, words pressed flat beneath her tongue. “As you wish, joli.” Her hands come up, push against his chest. 

This silk is back.

Cullen does not need to be told. Finding the band of her breeches, he hooks his thumbs in and peels the fine cotton away. Every new inch of skin revealed is softer than the last: nut brown and dewy, despite the corded thickness of the muscles beneath. Quick enough, his hands find a white, star burst knot the size of his fist in the middle of her right thigh and he stills, looks up into her face.

“Boar hunting,” she tells him, hands running through his honey-gold curls, fingers digging against his scalp. “When I was fifteen.” 

At her calf is a puncture wound, clean through.

“Speared by a fisherman in Lomeryn,” she smiles, tugging at his curls.

“What?” Cullen smiles around the stone in his mouth.

“I was twenty five. Very much an accident. I should remind you, bears do like to fish.”

A strangled cough. “That was terrible. Truly awful, my lady.” He sees what she's done, but there isn't enough patience in him to push any further. 

When his hand flit over the little buttons of her vest, she pushes them away, slots her fingers around his and pushes him down, down to the floor and the cushions and the thick, warm ribbon of sunlight splashing into the carriage. 

Silk tangles between them, winds around the little, narrow inches, catches against skin and buttons and buckles. 

Cullen stares down at the curling river of yellow winding across his chest, folded in sharp valley where his hip meets his thigh. He's done this once before, but there has been a good hill of coin exchanged and the silk has not been half so fine. Nothing like Trevelyan yellow. 

“Would you prefer to bind your own wrists joli?” Mirèio sighs. “Or would you have...”

He does not need her to finish; wrists held out to her, cushions soft at his back, he finds no use in words. In such a narrow, quieted space, what use is there in so much noise? 

The first brush of cold, fine silk over his skin pushes a little, thread-fine note between his teeth; Cullen bites his lip, the sting running alongside the weight of the silk being tied round his wrists. Her fingers are sure, steady, rough as the breath in her chest, and she lingers with each pass, the yellow slipping between palms so quietly it is almost a hush. Anticipation sparks in his belly, runs through him like the heady, lingering burn of good Starkhaven scotch.

“Trade with me, joli,” Mirèio murmurs, bending deep to lay her words along the red flush of Cullen's cheeks. “Ask me questions, tell me what you like, how you wish to be touched. Tell me what you found in my chambers.”

The burn of anticipation turns to need, to fire; his skin feels too-small, his blood too hot, his breath too thin. He remembers: fingertips slick with oil, her scent pressed between his palms, the cold indifference of her empty chambers and the sprawl of her bed. Silence and longing. 

“Tell me those things,” she breathes, summons, mouth too-red, too white, tongue dipped in the colours on his cheek. “And I will do the same for you. No more stumbling, joli. Tell me what you want.” 

Cullen lingers in the inches between them, in the heat of her mouth, in the binding of his wrists; lingers in the weight of her fingertips tucking in under the silk to rub the tender skin beneath. _What do I want? Have you an hour, a year? Have you the patience to listen? I do not know._

“Too much,” he laughs, and it is truth, lies, nonsense, everything he has no tongue to explain to her. He means it, with every wretched inch of heated skin. “Whatever you will give me.”

The binding at his wrists pulls taut, pulls Cullen's gaze up to watch as Mirèio wraps the yellow 'round her fist. Her shadow falls over him as she leans out. His world narrows down to the white gauze of her sleeves, the little buttons of her vest, the heat of her hand planted just at his ear, the prickling stretch of his muscles as she eases his arms above his head. Through a thick, roiling burn of need, he hears the rasp of silk being tied 'round the little handle. His teeth return to his lip, heat flaring down his throat, down his chest, down his neck.

“Mirèio.”

“Patience,” she laughs, looping the silk around the filigree handle before pulling away. She crawls down Cullen's frame, swaying with the bounce of the carriage and makes quick work of his boots. This time, his breeches come away with ease.

Unbidden, Cullen lifts his hips, waits for Mirèio to hook her fingers into the band of his smalls but he finds only her steel-bright eyes as she shoves his breeches down in a tangled mess around his ankles; rather than her fingers he finds her mouth on his skin, her laughter hot against the inside of his thigh when his sour murmur reaches her ears. 

“Might I ask why I need my smalls, Mirèio?”

“Patience, joli. Patience,” is her hum, her tongue flicking against the softness hidden away between his thighs. He's half hard already, the length of him pushed against his belly. “You will see.”

His exhale is loud, frustration burning brightly in the little space, and then she is back, settling against his legs, his thighs, the points of his knees digging into her lower back. Sprawled against him, Cullen watches her, drawn to the length of yellow she holds in her hands. Strange, that they are both clothed and yet he has not felt quite so bare in a long, long time. 

A tug, silk rasping against the handle, and Cullen jolts, shoulder blades pinned together; the burn is exquisite, riding just upon the edge of a sharper sting. Nothing more than if it were her hands pinning his arms above his head.

Oh.

_Oh._

His mouth splits open, wide and red, and he sucks in a lungful of air, giddy and eager and tied her by the slowly warming weight of silk. She plucks at the tie and Cullen feels her notes in the bones of his wrists, down the curve of his spine. 

“For every question asked, for every answer given, I will loosen the ties,” Mirèio says. “Should you need to stop, choose some word. Use it, and I will drop the silk.”

Cullen nods, laughter waring with his need. 

“What word?” she calls.

“Canticle,” he murmurs. He does not look away. There is no room for shame here. No room for fear. The mage girl with the horns – the one who haunts him, who sits in the darkest corners of his chambers when the moon in low and his heart is burning in his chest – she never asks. She never touches him. Never asks. Never. Only taunts. Mocks. Draws ugly memories through her claws, and along the violet prison that pins him to his bed like an insect.

She never knew these needs. Never. 

These needs were his. Stayed his. 

She only gave him what could not be. What his younger self had been ashamed to desire at the time: a mage, a girl who looked at him as if he was as brilliant and honest as she was. A girl who looked at him as if she knew nothing of the bitter, insistent voice in his head that told him he was lesser for wanting _anything_ from her.

He carried that insistent, bitter voice with him to Kirkwall, to the madness of the City of Chains, and it nearly broke him. It some ways, it did. Until he saw Maddox made blank for love, until he saw one of only a handful of templars the younger mages trusted turned out on his ear for tending to that love like a man with a heart should have done. Until Meredith was screaming in the courtyard and the wind stank of ashes and the wax of charred of flesh.

And now that man is his enemy, and here he is laid out beneath a woman who is a mage to the marrow of her bones. 

And there is no insistent, bitter voice.

_These desires are mine. They have always been mine. I want, I want, and I will not lose another moment. Not now._

“Here,” Mirèio says with a steady, unyielding certainty, “you will always be safe. Here, with me, you choose, and need fear no reprimand.” She tugs at the silk wrapped 'round her fist, watches _Cullen_ shiver beneath her, watches him stretch against the taut quiver of the silk at his wrists.

It has been a long while since she's wanted a man like this. Certainly not one quite so gilt, so _Fereldan_ as this one: the light washes over him, cuts gold into his hair, draws pink along the curve of his lips and darkens the red on his cheeks, down his throat. 

She has always loved beautiful things, loves nothing quite so much as watching all that prettiness unravel, unfurl into sweat and need and pleading, into a wreck made of her teeth and her tongue and her hands; she has always loved watching pretty things come apart, lose themselves in her fingers, her mouth, in the heat between her legs. 

He'll come apart, unravel, and she won't even need to touch him.

“Here,” she continues, “nothing will hurt unless you ask for it to hurt. Nothing will mark you unless you ask for me to mark you. Trust that I will only give you what you ask for, nothing more or less than that.”

“Mirèio, I should think it more likely that you would become the Black Divine than you would hurt me. You needn't remind me,” he replies. “I was listening the first time.”

Mirèio stills, utterly. “I have not earned that measure of trust yet, Cullen. Do not say such things. Not yet.” His words send her reeling, pluck the air from her lungs, crush her ribs with an unkind hand. Something young and small and afraid in her shakes, shakes and pulls away with such violence she cannot account for the ache. 

“But it is yours nonetheless.” And now, now he is _proud_ of the light in his voice, in the ease of these words he untucks from beneath his tongue. He is not certain why it is so easy, why he wishes to give her that with no hesitation on his part, but it is true. There is nothing in him he might use to lessen that truth.

She leans down, silk slack between them, breathes against his neck, eyes stinging and throat closed up like a fist. This is dangerous. So very, very dangerous. Too much; too easily given. 

Too much.

A little distance is needed. 

“You will watch, as I did. We are going to talk, and I am going to touch myself.”

Cullen groans, pulls hard against the silk. 

“I do hope your questions are good, Cullen. As good as your answers. I should hate to have my fingers do all the work.” Leaning down, she plucks at the long trail of little buttons on Cullen's shirt, undoes each one with a deft hand. So many colours, so many shades of red, and pink and white: a milk and honey altar built for her teeth and far too eager for her mouth, or so the rough hitch in his chest tell her. 

She settles against his thighs, legs spread wide and feet flat against the wooden floor. Watching the understanding creep through his face, she smiles, grinds down against the bulge of Cullen's erection hot against her backside. He moans, pushes against her ass, and she sways with him, with the carriage, delight in her mouth, under her tongue.

“Well,” she says with a laugh, “what is your question, joli?” 

A thousand things crowd round in his throat, a hundred questions that have nothing to do with the heat of her pressing down against his abdomen. _Who loved you first? Who have you done this too before? Who have you called joli, before, or is that mine?_ So many questions, but he wants her more than he wants answers to petty concerns. 

He hasn't forgotten the letter, hasn't forgotten Dorian's reprimand.

Later, always later it seems.

“Tell me of something particularly pleasurable to you?” he offers back with a surety that sits high and bright on his face.

“Are you sure you have restraint enough to listen, joli?” Her fingers wander, stroke from the dip of her knees to the peak of her thighs. 

“Restraint?” Without thinking, Cullen leans forward, pulls at his bindings, hunting for the sharpening of her gaze, for the rough snap of her teeth. “What are you implying?”

“Oh Cullen, I am not _implying_ anything. I am telling you: when I am finished you will have little patience left. Are you prepared for that, joli?”

“Seven weeks, Mirèio. I will have whatever there is to have.”

“Ah, bon deu, joli, as you wish,” the taller woman sighs, words pressed between the points of her teeth, edged out under the silver glint of her tongue.

Cullen watches her, eyes trained on the sprawl of her shoulders, on the motion of her hands against her own skin. She begins to move, her long strokes sure and lazy: a circling of her thumbs and her palms against the cords of her thighs built like the shifting of sunlight on the hide of an animal prowling beneath the leaves. She ripples, gloved fingers like talons, and he remembers: _they call me the Great Bear, even in Lomeryn._

“I learned, long ago, that trust was paramount.” Her words are a murmur, the whispering drag of her leather edging against the low burr of her voice. “And in my bed I have always derived great pleasure from exploring that. Trust is everything. Without it, it is mindless rutting. Without it, it is dangerous.”

“Aye,” Cullen breathes, tracking the hitch in her breath, the slick of her tongue over her teeth.

“For me, the best, the most pleasurable exercise in earning trust is a blindfold, and two, perhaps three lengths of fine silk. As you can see, this is only a little demonstration. Testing the waters, if you will.”

Her laughter runs through him, soaks into his skin and his hips and the sweet sting in his wrists. Saliva pools in his mouth, cheeks reddening under the picture her curling, red-edged voice paints across his frame, in his mind. “What,” he manages, “what would you do?”

“Depending on the patience of my lover, I begin by having them tie the blindfold themselves. I do not touch you. You to not touch me. The blindfold is a choice that you must make,” she murmurs, rocking down, her smalls a pleasant friction against the hard planes of Cullen's abdomen. One hand leave her thighs, creeps up his bare torso. Splaying her legs wider, she balances herself against him, rolls her hips in a steady, grinding motion that rubs between her folds, stokes the low heat in her belly into a sharp, prickling coil.

“Why the blindfold?” Cullen gasps, bucks into her rolling hips. Like this, he can see her smalls darken with moisture, the wet heat of her arousal slick against his belly. The question leaves him a tangled mess. His need is hot on his tongue, in his throat, in his lungs; his skin feels too small, too hot. Her laughter drags over him, sharp as her nails beneath her gloves. 

With a knowing grin, mouth as red as the snout of a wolf, Mirèio says: “Quite simply, I have been told it is pleasurable to surrender so much.” The silk in her hands pulls taut, snaps harshly in her fist and she finds him a fine curve of muscles and wanting beneath her, the heat of his erection grinding against her backside. 

She's struck true. 

That is what he wants: surrender. The choice, the freedom to kneel and be raised up whole again. 

“Is that what you want?” she whispers.

He wants her skin, her mouth, he wants her hands bare, as they were the first time she touched him, as she took his cries in her mouth and he left his seed on her sheets. 

“Yes,” is a thick, needful cry in his mouth. “Please. Mirèio. I want your hands, your teeth. Your tongue. Maker, I love your hands. Like iron. Please.”

“Iron?” she laughs, breathless and torn, folded under his need. So genuine. So bare. Like this, in this narrowed place filled by their noises alone, there is no room for anything less than honesty. “I have never heard that one before.”

If there is any noise he might give to her, it dies in his aching chest as he watches her peel the leather from her fingers with her teeth; she stretches, legs splayed wide and her sex hot against his skin, curves her spine and tosses her gloves away. 

He licks his lips, tugs on her silk, and her hands come down, return to her knees, begin their slow curling towards her damp smalls.

“I would have you understand joli, that when I take you...” 

Cullen's groan burns in his throat, her command of silence stitching his lips together.

“By the end,” she purrs, “I will know, to the letter, every note of bliss your body is capable of singing.” Mirèio smiles, lets her voice dip low, and soft and dark as wet earth. “And with the blindfold, it is so much more. It says that you wish for me to find these notes, and bare them to you in a world made wholly of just you and I. A narrowing of you and I to only touches, noises, sensations.”

Oh. 

“No sight but what my hands give you.”

Oh sweet, merciful Andraste.

“No noise but your own voice and mine.”

Maker, but he wants.

Under the whisper of her words, Cullen feels himself redden, tighten, turning hot and dry, pulled open. Finds steel against his spine and her road-dust and dragon-blood sword in the meat of his shivering lungs. 

His eyes slip shut, fingers curling around the warm silk, back arching up from the cushions beneath his too-warm frame. It is so easy to imagine: her hands at his ankles, her hands on his thighs, digging into his hips, the hum she makes as she considers where to leave a red half-moon of teeth. So easy to call up the sensation of knowing nothing but her voice and her tongue and her fingers; her heat, her weight, her iron. 

“What of the silk?” he chokes out, mouth pulled in strange directions. “Will it be like this?”

“Ah,” she chuckles, flicks the taut cord in her hand, “that is wholly your choice also. If it is desired, you will have your hands above your head, wrists tied, pinned just enough to sting when you pull. A reminder that you have given yourself over into my hands, that you are certain I can bring you through whole, and safe. Satisfied. Emptied of everything but the pleasure I can give you, that you have asked for.”

Cullen cannot keep a little, too-red moan behind his teeth.

“Hush,” she chuckles and he leans a little further up, the silk creaking under his weight. He breathes out, low and soft, air strung thin over his tongue.

“Ankles too, should you desire to bound completely. I do not do it often, it seems excessive.”

“Excessive? Cullen forces out, grits his teeth and squeezes his eyes shut. 

Mirèio leans nearer, near enough to paint her breath across his cheeks as she murmurs: “I prefer to see just how far your control extends. To lay you out on my bed and bring you so far beyond your restrain you cannot be anything but a pleading, jangling mess beneath my hands.”

A rough, thin hiccup of air drags out of his mouth, and Cullen pulls hard, arms shaking and thighs trembling, knees as soft as candle wax. Without warning her hand snakes out, an arm looping around his waist, and Cullen snaps, growls, even as she yanks him hard to her chest.

She holds him fast. “Look at me, joli.”

He does, finds her splendid and sharp above him.

“Next question?” she smiles, mouth flush to the red painted along Cullen's cheekbone.

Cullen groans, shows her his teeth even as her nose angles down, even as her tongue slips along the hammer of his pulse, one hand holding the silk high above her head. “Do you tease every lover you've had in this manner, or is it just to watch me squirm?”

“Yes.”

“Yes what?” he snaps, hisses. 

She settles him against the cushions, leans back against his shaking thighs; fingers tipped in ivory, she parts the fabric of her smalls, paints her own fluid along the curls beneath her fingertips.

The silk goes taut again, and Cullen strains, lungs banded tight and a graceless wheeze on his lips. He can smell her now, musky and sharp. She's wet and hot against him, one finger dipping into her cunt, spreading herself before him. Her shoulders ease, the rhythm of her hips an indolent rolling against his belly, against his hardening cock. 

She adds a second finger, strokes in and up in a slow, unhurried rhythm. The familiarity she has with her own body is a delight, a privilege. To see so much of her – the shiver of pleasure building beneath her skin, the red of her lip pinned between her teeth, the wet, vital noise of her fingers sliding, curling against her walls – is almost too much to bear. He can feel her breath climbing high, higher with each stroke, feel her thighs quake. She wears her pleasure as sharply as she does everything else. 

It is magnificent. She is magnificent. And he can't touch her, can't taste her. He would rather his fingers than hers, rather his face between her legs than her hand. 

“Tell me,” she whispers, fingers slick and shining, curling up to the stiff peak of her clit. “Tell me joli, how it is you would like me to take you.”

“Mirèio.” Her fingers crook, one nail pressing hard against the bud nestled in her folds, and Cullen feels her pleasure sting along every inch of his body, the arch in her spine and the quake in her wrist, the little noises she presses behind her tongue. 

_Maker, please._

“From behind,” he breathes. “On my knees. Thighs and ass red, marked,” her nail is replaced by her thumb and she grinds down hard, circling the pad against her clit. The sight makes him jolt beneath her, whimper. She smiles, presses harder, mouth falling open, tongue loose and eyes falling shut. “Or perhaps,” he chokes, sucks at the saliva on his tongue, “beneath you, my knees pressed to your chest, or my ankles at your back.” He so red he is certain his skin is crackling, peeling. Every breath is too hot, too thick.

“Best to start slow,” she groans, chuckles. “Open you up with my fingers.”

The silk in her hand is a shivering thing, alive with the notes of Cullen's desires. 

“Go on, joli. Tell me how you'd like to be fucked. Surely not just fingers?”

Her pace quickens, fingers sliding in and out, the fabric of her smalls hiding nothing; she is wet enough to slip against his belly, wet enough that he can feel it against his skin and Cullen is lost to the motions of her hands, to the silk and her fingers. “Maker, I. Mirèio. I told you, I want more than your hands.”

Without breaking her rhythm, she leans forward just so, the bones of her wrist pressing into the shuddering planes of Cullen's abdomen. “How fortunate for you, I have such good taste in cocks,” she huffs. “I have several. Some better than others.”

“I know,” leaves his mouth before he can think better of it. Seven weeks is a long time to wait, and she'd just left the little chest there, tucked beneath the green covered bench. 

“Tell me,” is a growl, a snap. 

“You just, just left it there,” he whispers, laughter bright in his mouth. “As if you'd intended for me to find it.”

“Of course I did,” is a huff between clenched teeth. The coil in her belly is tight, stinging; her fingertips are numb with heat, with warmth, with her own slick moisture. There's only so much patience in her.

“Mirèio.” Her scent is thick in the back of his throat and his cock is a red ache in his smalls.

“Sí?” The stitch in her lungs grows into a breathless, thread-bare gasp. So close, only a moment more. The man beneath her is desperate, heaving, rolling with her hips; every dip of her fingers between her folds is another whimper, another twist in the silk. Her grin is wide, stinging. 

“Mirèio, please, I...”

Her fingers slide, she adds a third, thumb pressed hard to her clit; her breath climbs, soars.

“Maker, woman, let me finish you. Let me taste you, I am begging you.” His voice is a red ruin; thin and hot and stretched too-tight. “Please.”

“Did you take something from the chest?” is a thick, lingering groan that leaks down her throat, her chest.

“Yes. Yes.” Cullen jolts her from behind, knocks his knees into her lower back in a desperate attempt to launch her at his face. 

“Did you bring it with you?” she laughs, long and low, swaying against the points of Cullen's knees, jerking against his hips. 

“Yes,” is as loud cry as he dares, a plea he cannot choke down. He cannot breathe through the heat in his face, in his blood, between his legs, on his stomach. “Maker, Mirèio.”

The silk goes slack and his arms sag, a tingling ache singing from fingertip to shoulder blade. He blinks at her, at her still fingers, at her wide, white grin and her red, red mouth. She slides up, the heat of her sex pressing down, smearing wet and slick over his chest. He groans, bites his tongue and his cheeks until there is the copper sting of blood on his tongue. 

Trevelyan yellow flutters between them, over Cullen's throat, over his eyes, and he pulls, silk pooling down to his elbows. He reaches for her, desperate, keening in the back of his throat. Wraps his hands around her hips to the curve of her ass and hauls her forward. Up and forward until he can breathe against the softness of her inner thigh, until her fluid is smearing across his cheek and she hot and musky and sharp above him, around him. 

Her knees strike against the wooden floor and she chokes on a laugh, on a growl. “So eager,” she gasps, arches, struck into silence at the breach of his tongue between her folds. “Joli,” a lilting call from deep in the pit of her chest.

No more words. No more words from him. No more sounds.

He pushes his tongue in deep, sucks her folds into his mouth before lathing up to her clit, nose pressed flush to the dark curls. Maker, she's wet enough to drown in, wet and hot and vital in his mouth. He flicks his tongue against her walls, catches the hitch in her lungs in his throat. She slips a little, laughter as thick as ever, and it shivers down her frame, through his tongue, through his chest. He wants that noise, the one that is only half a breath and mostly teeth. He hunts for it, angles his face up until he can push his tongue and his teeth against her clit. 

She chokes above him, head thrown back, the decorations in her braids clattering like little copper bells. Every pass of his tongue tightens her frame, makes her clench, the noises in her throat as vicious as her teeth against the bow of her mouth. 

Cullen pushes in more, coating his cheeks and his chin, and sucks on the little bundle of nerves at the peak of her cunt, laves his tongue against it. Her hand flies out, clutches at the little silver handle. 

“Cullen,” is his name stretch long and low between her teeth. “Joli,” is her broad shoulders rolling, shaking, thighs spread wide. She leans back, away, and he follows, a snarl and a whimper all tangled in her heat.

The hand not gripping the door handle creeps down the shuddering planes of his abdomen until her fingers brush against his leaking cock. With practiced ease she pulls him from his smalls, the calluses on her fingers making her hand glide rough and stinging. Her skin is tacky from her own fluid, but it takes only a moment until she's working him in rhythm that presses her sharp nails against his skin as if they were her teeth, her palm squeezing gently as if it were her mouth. Cullen moans beneath her, against her sex, and she watches his eyelashes flutter, dark and wet against the soft skin beneath his lust-dark eyes. 

“Come on, meu joli,” she breathes, “let go.” His fingers dig sudden and sharp into the small of her back, the sting of his nails cutting against the breathless rush in her chest. “Sing for me.”

Beneath her, between her legs, Cullen arches, pushes his cock into her hand and his tongue into her cunt, sucks hard and long and the breath goes out of her as if struck clean through. She gasps around him, clenches, grinding down, comes apart on his tongue in a bright rattle of copper bands and sodden noises bit red. He follows her, his release flooding through as hers drips down his chin and over his cheeks, his own seed hot and thick on his belly, on her skin. 

The only sound in the carriage is the great, bellows heave of their mingled breath and the creaking of wood. 

“Joli,” Mirèio whispers, pulls away from his slick face only to meet his palms digging into her ass, his fingers curling between her thighs. Cullen tilts his face up, breathes against her hip, open-mouthed and eyes closed, the gold lace of his lashes now tacky with her fluid, clinging together, to his cheeks. “What a sight you are.”

He smiles, mouth red and wet and shining, cheeks and chin bright and slick with her release. “I trust,” he rasps, voice thick and gravel bright in his chest, “my tongue was to your liking, Mirèio?”

The handle rattles and she slips, sinks down to laugh into the sweaty, salty hollow of his throat. “Maker's mighty Throne, Cullen, that was, without a doubt, a great heap of reckless enthusiasm.”

There is laughter in equal to hers in his throat, and Cullen drags a useless, tingling hand up to wrap her braids round his fist, fingers curled round the back of her skull. 

“I might be a little jealous. I pride myself on that skill, you know.”

“I am relieved,” he sighs, even as her hand comes up to clean the fluid from his chin and his cheeks and his nose. For a moment, his world becomes a veil of fine white cotton and a sky filled with silk birds and flowers, and the weight of her body laid over his. “Most glad.”

“Wrists,” she murmurs, even against the warm curling of Cullen's fingers against her scalp and the stinging tug of her braids wrapped round his fist. “Let me see, joli.”

He offers them without words and her fingers brush over the red raw skin, chapped by the silk and the strength of his twisting. The skin is hot to the touch and she makes a tutting noise, tongue pressed flat to the back of her teeth.

“Shall I?” is a whisper against his throat, mouth nipping along his jaw. 

“No.” Cullen finds her eyes, holds her gaze. “I'd rather keep the marks.”

“As you wish,” Mirèio chuckles, satisfaction and surprise tied round her tongue. “Wonders never cease,” is a hush, nigh on reverent press of her lips, of her teeth. 

In the narrow, sun soaked cloister of the carriage, the light falls in through the windows, noon day bright and strong, the scent of sex and dust and oranges running under the green snap of her magic: cool and sharp as good, dark earth. Cullen breathes deep of it, sucks the roil into his lungs as her fingers curl around his wrists, as she rolls him onto his side so that they may curl up in the sprawl of cushions. 

There is something fragile in the little spaces between them, and neither one cares to dig it out, expose it to the light, to the weight of reality. Small things should be kept safe, tucked close til they are strong enough to take more space than silence will allow. 

Her legs tangle in his and she tucks his wrists, still in the circle of her long fingers, against his chest, just beneath his chin; her nose finds the nape of his neck and Cullen chuckles as the Bear settles against his back. 

“I trust that was what you were hoping for, Cullen.” The skin beneath her fingers is still hot, and the nape of Cullen's neck is a tangle of salt and curls, but she's never seen quite so pretty a sight as this man's face between her thighs. Golden and sweet as honey-suckle, sharp as a ripe peach freshly torn by her teeth. So many fine colours, so many soft, delicious noises, but she needs to hear him howl, hear that gravel-bright voice wracked and split open by desire, by pleasure, by his own climbing need. She needs to hear him scream.

“It is a start,” he sighs, and the quiet, gentle thing in his chest grows soft, stinging. 

“Ah, dieu miséricordieux, joli, you have no idea.”

“Oh?” he laughs, intolerably bright and content and still threaded through with want, with the knowledge that there is more to have. More to be given. “I rather think I am beginning to understand.”

Her smile is a slow, curling shape against his skin, the rush of her breathing falling into a steady, low rhythm. 

The silence is broken only by the jingle of stones against the underside of the carriage and the groaning bounce of the wheels. 

“Mirèio?”

“No,” she murmurs, squeezing his wrists. “Later, joli. Tonight, tomorrow, but not now. Let's enjoy this ne? Maker knows I cannot fuck you in my tent.”

“Whyever not?” Cullen laughs. 

“Because it is either you sleep with me and you and I keep the whole company awake until dawn, or you displace Dorian and he goes to sleep with the Bull. And then we will get no rest till mid-morning.”

“Oh.”

“Yes,” she smiles. “Oh.”

Shadows and thorns and old, old wounds; new fears – he tucks them away, sets them aside despite their sting. 

Tonight. Tomorrow. Soon.

This, her tall, iron-boned frame stretched out around his, her fingers wrapped round his wrists, holding him to her, to the rise and fall of her chest and her steady strength, is enough.

It is enough, for now, because it has to be.

~ * ~

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> On the next episode of this author is a terrible person: Cullen gets the dicking of his life. 
> 
> Also Halamshiral.
> 
> Stay tuned.


	16. Noli Me Tangere

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two things, friends:
> 
> 1\. I'm splitting this chapter up. Possibly into two or three parts. I've decided to put the shameless porn into whatever part ends up being the last, because this turned out sadder than I wanted it to, and I'm not entirely sure the porn fits, so if the porn doesn't work for you you'll be able to just skip over that chapter.
> 
> 2\. To the small collection of salty hate readers (from the place that will not be named) this fic has somehow picked up, let me make one thing very clear to you: I don't actually give two dry fucks what you think of me or my writing or anything else in this fic. I'm an adult and this is sodding fanfiction, friends. What I do give a damn about is that you think the language I've chosen for the Northern Marches is BASTARDIZED PORTUGUESE. If you'd taken ten seconds to look up Jaufre Rudel, who is cited in the chapter notes, you'd know that it is not. Look, I don't know what corners of the fan world you hail from, but where I come from, you don't butcher languages for fanfiction. That's vile. The one poem (canso), music, and handful of words used are either Occitanian or Catalan. Catalan is the modern descendant of Occitanian, which was mediaeval Europe's language of courtly love. Richard the Lion-hearted and Elinor of Aquitane spoke and wrote in Occitanian. This language has a long, rich and diverse history, and its regional specific dialects stretch from the Balearic Islands to Monaco. Occitanian represents the height of the concept of courtly love and devotion, and produced some of the most beautiful works from that period. Even better, it was one of the only cultural regions to allow for women writers (known as a trobairitz), the most famous being Beatritz, Comtessa de Dia. This language produced some of the earliest mediaeval examples of women singing, writing and expressing desires in their own right. Kinda important, if you ask me.
> 
> I don't owe strangers on the internet my background, but I did not choose this language (or her skin colour) for tumblr sj brownie points. I chose her background and language for myself, and myself only, for my own personal reasons. That you would think I did anything noted above for "exotique" flavour is your hangup, not mine. 
> 
> And y'know what, it's perfectly okay for you to hate the fuck out of that. Just don't dismiss an entire language because you couldn't be bothered to look up the canso, or read any of the comments from other readers where I explicitly discussed the language.
> 
> For your comfort, I've left the anon option on, should you feel the need to discuss this further. If not, I am more than happy to continue accepting your wasted hours my salty friends. 
> 
> P.S - to the one who thought this was going to be an actual re-write of Rizal's Noli Me Tangere: I've never been in a situation (fandom or otherwise) where it's acceptable to use a novel that sparked a nation's revolution, whose author was executed for his act of rebellion, as fic fodder. Did you look at the tags for this fic?? No. Just no. Gross. Disrespectful. Wrong. 
> 
> Anyway, sorry I was gone so long. Please enjoy. More up shortly, I just have to finish up the smut.

~ * ~

Halamshiral is a many-toothed monstrosity curled up in a green valley, glass and gold spires reaching up into the sky with greedy fingers. The elves called this place salvation, the end of their long journey, and now it is a monument to a history not their own, its mortar mixed with their blood. It is so like Orlesians to build mighty reminders of how an empire unchallenged may write its mind on all things, even the dirt itself. 

“You will not like who I must be here, joli.” 

He turns to her, skin prickling, colour on his cheeks. The woods are quiet, birdsong running away with the wind. 

Too many words press on his chest, in his throat – deadly and sharpened by time, and the silence imposed on them by the company of others. He wants to know her, was not lying when he told her, all those weeks ago, that he would have her magic as much as he would have her. He knows he cannot have her without her magic, but his life has made the offering up of vulnerabilities foreign to him: a great stretch of land he has never laid eyes upon, a language he has no tongue good enough to work in. 

“Mirèio.” Her hair is bound up in great coils on her head, and his fingers itch to trace the fine line of her nose, the sharp cut of her cheeks, the curve of her jaw. Last night, after the sun had tumbled down into the hazy mountains, Dorian had undone her braids. When the sun had clawed up into the sky, pink and soft, she let him make her new ones. His hands strung her copper bands into the black sprawl; his hands touched the terribly soft skin at the nape of her neck. 

Cullen would prefer that to be his privilege now, not Dorian's. 

Despite his protests to the contrary, jealousy is a bent little shape that has clambered up to sit on his shoulder. The shape has needling little claws, and it digs in to find anger and irritation where there should be an easy silence. Worse, there is hardly any time left to him to push the little beast down, never mind speak to her about it. 

“I am not an able player, and I only know how to be one thing with these people.”

“And what is that?” he murmurs, adrift in the sudden understanding that she is giving him something from behind her own stone walls, something she has shared with precious few outside Ostwick. And that, he finds, is sorrow mixed with delight. 

“First born. Teryn-Ascendant. Daughter of the Grey Lady. Scion of old House Trevelyan. Third Príncipe of the Gremio of Tolivara. I will be cold, you will not enjoy it.” Her surety is stone; she has not been herself amongst southerners in all her life. Before all this nonsense, well, the high festival days spent in the drowsy, backwater splendour of Starkhaven's court never brought her anything but an ugly outrage only Arnau ever saw. 

“Choose the army, and we can be gone from this place in a handful of hours.” The disdain in her gaze curls his tongue up, the back of his neck tight with remorse. “I apologize, that was too harsh.”

A contemplative noise leaves her and she shakes her head. “No, you are right.”

“And?”

“But my answer is still no.” 

He sighs, mouth a crooked shape. “I do not care, I trust that you have made the right choice.”

“Fool,” she laughs, copper bands rattling, Scivias' red threads spinning in her lap. 

“I do not care if you are cold, Mirèio,” Cullen replies, nudging his mount further into the shadow of hers. The sun is creeping up higher, hotter, and the others are not far behind. “Be what you must with these people. Besides,” he laughs, “I would prefer you share your warmth with me, not with those _Orlesians_.” 

Honesty is a hard thing to devote oneself to, harder by far for him to keep a grip on.

Her laughter tumbles like bright pebbles. “You say that like a curse. _Orlesians_ ,” she drawls, spitting the same bitter syllables. She leans near, her horse whickering under the awkward slanting of her weight. “And you should know by now, there is a great deal I give only to you. You need only ask.”

“Oh? My lady I must dispute those claims,” Cullen replies, struck clean through, and the world is made suddenly, intolerably bright. “I asked you to fuck me in your tent. I believe you declined that request.”

“Now now, joli,” she smiles, breath hot against his ear. “Might I remind you that the item you brought is best used in a place with a door, and a lock, and enough bare wall for me to ward for silence.”

Heat runs out like water to the tips of his fingers, to his belly, to his toes. He turns his head just so, and her lips brush against the edge of his mouth. Like this it is as if she might write every inch of her wide grin into his skin.

Oh how he wants.

_Patience_ , he reminds himself. 

“Are you really so worried, Mirèio?”

“Yes,” she bites out, broad shoulders rolling, her body sliding back into the saddle, away. “I have never had to suffer the company of so many southerners as, well as my true self. As a mage. I am afraid I will not be kind, and it will not be easy.”

“What?” Cullen blurts out, choking on a noise that is not laughter. He finds his lungs squeezed, concern and something not too distant from fear seeded into his thoughts. _How can she be so blithe? How can she say such things, and then merrily turn away?_

She clicks her tongue behind her teeth, her Imperial picking up his pace, and he must bite down on the mad scramble of words crowding under the meat of his tongue. “Mirèio! Whatever do you mean by that? Why should it matter?”

“Later,” she murmurs. “The others are not far behind, and I'm tired of being interrupted. So are you, I think.” 

Cullen frowns, the reins in his hands cutting into his palms hard enough to bruise. She stares straight ahead, shoulders stiff, every inch the cold stone icon, and his stomach twists, curdles. “If you insist,” he grits out, “but I like it not.”

“I know,” Mirèio replies. “Neither do I.”

_Later_ , it seems, will be the rope they hang themselves by – that much he is beginning to understand. 

The birdsong and the wind are gone for a long, long time. 

~ * ~

Gaspard is waiting for her in the brazier light pooling at the mouth of the golden gates; Halamshiral sits close, its towers glittering, fractured light spilling out over salt white stone. Something this beautiful should not feel like a great, gaudy stain, but it does, and she has not the time to untangle the why. 

The man bows low, mask a feast of sharp points, and she wants nothing more than to cram her fist down his throat, pull out that wagging red tongue of his and toss it away. How can a man who has such disdain for the Game find no compassion for those most ill-used by its teeth? She hardly knows him, but he could not be lower in her eyes than if he were to press his nose to the dirt. 

“Inquisitor,” the man drawls, head dipping just low enough to mimic respect, “I am most pleased to finally make your acquaintance. Word of your exploits has reached fever pitch here in Orlais and it is most good to lay face to name. And quite the name at that.”

“And what name would that be, Grand Duke?” is her soft reply, cold as the blue edge of a blade.

“My chevaliers tell me you came to the Inquisition already in possession of a soubriquet of your own. They tell me you are called the Bear. The Great Bear of Ostwick.” 

“I am well travelled, Grand Duke. House Trevelyan prides itself on expecting more of its children than an upturned nose.” The Duke laughs: a warm and frightfully honest sound in a dark, artful garden filled with little, needlepoint eyes and sly mouths hid behind wings, and antenae, and fangs. 

It would be so easy.

“Good,” Gaspard murmurs. “Then you and I are already quite well matched. This evening should prove fruitful for us both, Inquisitor.” 

His mouth is oddly soft beneath hard, jackdaw eyes. His hands are big, rough, well used.

“Yes, your grace, I believe so.” It would be so easy to choose him, choose his men. It would cost her nothing to let Orlais' chevaliers die for this cause, for the god they believe in wholly, for the Chantry who will embrace them when they are dead, regardless of the elvhen blood on their blades. No scholar will come for their names with a knife, carve their lives and their triumphs up until they are acceptable tools for morning lauds. No one will steal their history, make them unrecognizable shapes to feed to children who will grow into their bodies longing to be told what is right, and good.

The Inquisition's banners would make the chevaliers eternal, ageless icons. 

Much, much too easy.

Distantly, she hears the murmuring begin. 

_A mage? From the Ostwick Circle? Did they not all burn with the tower?_

Gaspard drifts away, his tread every bit as musical, as deadly as her own.

_No, that one's not from a Circle. An apostate._

_Surely not! Her family should be ashamed._

The stairs are white as the waves-caps beneath the Yellow House, and polished mirror bright; her boots ring loudly as she climbs for what feels like a little sliver of eternity, feeling her own shadow like a blemish. 

Oh how she hates these southerners.

~ * ~ 

Cullen adjusts the collar of his dress uniform, the fabric feeling more like a rough cord of rope cutting into his throat; if he peeled the edges away, would his skin be as red and hot as the nervous roil in his belly?

This place. These people. He hears their buzzing as if it has been planted in the root of his brain, and the urge to scratch at his ears is nearly overwhelming.

A nightmare.

A waking, unrelenting nightmare. 

These people rustle like birds, mouths hooked as beaks, and he cannot find a scrap of honesty in any of their faces – all is a sea of painted cheeks, and carefully tended smiles. So many hands, so many eyes, so many risks: a dark thicket of intentions hidden behind smiles and silk and cloth of gold. 

Madame de Fer had insisted they all arrive flushed as if from another salon, as if this were just one stop in a busy schedule brimming over with plans and long evenings and many other Houses eager to cavort and drink wine with the Inquisition's finest. 

_Let Halamshiral think they are an afterthought_ , she'd said. _Let them think their attention secondary to our own needs, our own desires. Let them think we do not care._

Halamshiral. 

Gold, and golden and gleaming. A sprawling palace built of glass and marble and curling vines that mocks and mimes the honest beauty of a forrest. Candied pinks and blues that splash out over walls large enough to put Skyhold's stones to shame, all crowned by foamy white moulding as if the place was a confection for the eyes: something one puts in their mouth and savours before reaching out to take more. 

He hates this place, and he's not been here more than half a turning of the glass.

He's not seen her, not spoken to her since that small, heated moment in the woods before they'd rejoined the others and he is tired of waiting. Wants this over and done with quickly, and with as little bloodshed as possible. 

Cullen is tired of reading the strain on her face, the bitterness in her gaze. Stood here, waiting in the press of bodies at the mouth of the stairs, he realizes just how tied his hands are, how little space there is for something other than a bare acknowledgement of what she'd only spoken of in passing. 

In the forrest she'd evaded his questions with skill, as if the thought of touching what lay under her words was a violence she could not bear to inflict upon herself. That is the worst of it: being made to feel helpless, blind, in a new, unmarked place.

Southerners. She'd talked of southerners as if she held herself separate and apart, as if these lands were not hers, as if this place and its people were some manner of beast whose teeth she was all too familiar with. Thinking upon her letters, the ones filled with her stories, her travels, he struggles to recall if she had called herself a southern lord, or only that some in Rivain saw her as such. 

Perhaps he does not understand her half so well as he should, as he would prefer.

The murmuring grows to a fever pitch, and then dies. Far, far down the great length of the glittering hall a pair of doors whisper open and from its gilt mouth comes the Sun-Queen herself: La Lionne de Valmont; the Golden Empress of all Orlais. 

Gold and golden, just as her palace, her heraldry, her history; Celene looks as if the sun itself is crowning beneath her pale hair, as if her shoulders bear the light of the world, and in the sharing of her company she too brings upon her guests that same light. As if, by deigning to glide through the throngs of her people, she brings in her august wake a rejuvenation, a harkening to wonder, to the immovable certainty of an ageless truth: the sun rises, always. And with that self-same sun unfurling between her thin shoulders, it says: but only at my command.

Orlesians.

Fucking Orlesians.

And then the _Inquisitor_ is beside him, the scent of oranges and bitter herbs plucking at the hard lines of his shoulders, settling down along his spine to steal some little portion of tension, and Cullen finds himself breathing out again.

“Are you ready, Commander?” 

Cullen shivers. Her voice is nothing like that night in the war-room, nothing like the hours in the greenhouse, nothing like the summons in the yard or the murmur in his ear when she chases the heat in his cheeks. Nothing like her promise of a door and a lock, and silence. This is cold, unfeeling stone, and she was right: he does not enjoy it. 

He turns to her, and the breath dies in his throat.

Oh if she were a king before, she is something else entirely now: a whetted blade, freshly drawn against the stone. Every inch of her turned towards some terrible purpose. Maker's mercy but he wants to dig his fingers in, pluck out each little button running down her fine black surcoat, unravel the gold thread sprawl cutting down her torso. He wants the naked strength of her shoulders beneath his hands and the slick river of her hair at his throat. 

She looks a wolf, come to walk amongst the sheep.

“No,” he manages to croak out, and he is back in the juddering carriage, wrestling with his need to pull all that fine leather off her knees. He blinks, fighting with the memory of his mouth against the damp heat of her naked thighs. “Not in the slightest.” She is wearing the same boots – the leather round the topmost buckle still holding the faint impression of his teeth. 

Her hand twitches in tandem with her mouth, and when he hears her suck on her teeth, watches her think better of touching him, he must do his utmost not to let his disappointment slip out to make a mess of his tattered dignity. 

“Think of this as a skirmish then, and pray we pull through well enough to leave as quietly as we came.”

_Maker's fucking mighty Throne, I should have asked her to fuck me in the carriage, in her tent, in the Void-forsaken forrest._

He tries not to think of what he's brought in his personal effects, of how carefully he had memorized the route to the chambers she has been given here in Halamshiral. He certainly does not think of dragging her into the nearest, darkest corner in this blighted place to get on his knees and press his hot face into all that cold leather, to hear her hiss above him, to have her curve above him, mouth a crooked, wanting shape beneath dark eyes. 

Distantly, behind the roaring in his ears, he hears: “The Right High and Most Holy Inquisitor Trevelyan, Teryn-Acsendant of Ostwick, third Prince of the Gremio of Tolivara. First-born of Teryn Elisau Beatritz Trevelyan, and Consort Ferran Ordoño de Tolivara.”

As she strides forward to meet the ringing litany of her titles, Cullen finds his fingers curling into his fists hard enough to make the leather creak in his grip. For all the formal, martial splendour at her front, her back is utterly bared. Not a scrap of cloth save for her own yellow silk at her waist.

Naked as a whetted blade.

Josephine comes to stand beside him, her announcement waiting on the hush of the Inquisitor's jingling, deadly tread.

“Who,” Cullen spits out with a snarl, “who in the name of the Maker and His Bride dressed her like that?”

The Ambassador laughs, covering her flash of teeth with her hand, and says: “Oh come now, Commander, do you think anyone could get her to agree to something like that if she was not in full mind of its uses?” 

Cullen finds he is sucking in air through his teeth, a little hiss pressed into every word. “She is walking out into a sea of daggers, Ambassador, and there is literally, literally nothing shielding her back to any of them.”

“I know,” Josephine steadies, offers him a quick, warm squeeze against his forearm. “Is it not brilliant?” She pretends to fuss with the hem of her gown, flicking the purple silk over her beaded slippers. Tis a little thing to give the man a moment to collect himself. 

“Brilliant?” he nearly howls, Josephine's little hand falling away; in a bare-faced attempt at self-preservation, he keeps his fists tucked tight to his sides. “How is any of this brilliant?” He will not gesticulate like a madman, he will not. 

“Even like that,” Josephine replies with a little, sympathetic grin, pointing to the lean shape moving over the shining marble floor, “they cannot touch her. Even with a naked back, bared for all to see, she is mightier than they. And they should learn so quickly.”

Cullen frowns, resisting the urge to pinch the bridge of his nose, even as the colour sweeps out over his skin, scalp prickling and palms suddenly damp. “I'm sure Madame de Fer is quite proud.”

“It was her idea.”

“Of course it was.” 

Halamshiral: what a wretched monstrosity.

~ * ~

The rustling, pressing crowd is nothing she is not somewhat used to: the voices, the pitch, the lowered eyes and carefully tended smiles – all familiar. What is different are the words their mouths. She cannot hide here. The burning Circle tower stole that from her, and the Anchor took what poor scraps she might have kept for herself. 

Years of training, years of learning to crush herself and her magic down into the smallest point while still towering above all those who glanced her way, and now she is naked, exposed: a wild thing caught in a old steel trap. It has been a long time since she's bled so fiercely in a place this public.

Leliana sits on a couch as fine as the ones in the House of the Eagle, her ankles stitched together and her hands neat, held perfectly still. “Inquisitor,” she says with a bare nod, “are the walls whispering to you yet?”

Mirèio snorts, her hand falling to the riding crop tucked into her yellow silk. “If I could enchant their secrets out of them, Sister Nightingale, I would.” She waves a hand as if to bat the murmuring away. “I have little patience for the Game.”

“I know. Speak with Briala, and perhaps you will not find it must remain so distasteful.”

“What are you hiding, Leliana?” Her tongue is neutered, mild. She hates this – the artful tone of her voice, the bloodless campaign, with all the quiet violence she is capable of mustering. More than that, she hates it because leaves her staring down at a woman she suspects might have been a dear friend, had time and the world not stolen so much from them both. 

“Do you remember that conversation we had in the supply tent?”

“Yes.” And something wound tight loosens in her, gives her space enough to remember Leliana is not just Sister Nightingale. Leliana is as small and afraid as she is, only she hides it with far more grace. That pretty Orlesian face is the least, but most subtle of her weapons. 

“Believing is a hard thing. Unforgiving. It asks a great deal of us.” Leliana frowns, hands still neat and orderly in her lap. “I've not always believed in the right things, nor the right causes, nor the right people. But I want the world she saved to be worthy of her, and I will do what I must to see it so.”

Silence stretches long and Mirèio finds her words sticking to her teeth. So much here should not be her concern, even less her knot to unravel, but the Inquisition demands; she must answer. Always, it seems, it is left to her to answer. 

“An elvhen mage-girl and a Chantry sister, the stuff of great tales,” Mirèio replies. She leaves the name in silence, brackets the empty space for Leliana to fill, should she so choose, and that careful quiet earns her something strange: a smile with no teeth, no heat. A gift so small, so plain, it is easy to miss. 

“Tis no different than a mage and a templar.”

Mirèio's heart ricochets into her throat, her fingers tangling in yellow, seeking cold leather. “That story has yet to be written. Let us not presume.”

“Oh?” Leliana laughs, “but I think, Inquisitor, you'll find the Maker has a wonderful sense of humour.”

“He does,” she laughs. “Else He would have done the sensible thing, and let me go home to my sheep.” No matter how she tries, she has nothing sharp enough to cut that knot out of her belly. Worse is the recognition that skitters over Leliana's porcelain face, as if she knows what it is to grieve for a place one cannot return to; as if she knows that particular longing for a moment, for a home, for an hour that cannot be had again, cannot be found again. A longing for something gone, not just because the years have dulled it, weathered it, changed it, but because that place, that hour, that moment is truly gone – removed not just by time, but by the very act of returning, of seeking it out. 

Whether it is out of politeness, shock, or some mangled breed of sympathy, Leliana remains silent a moment more than her carefully cultivated ambivalence allows. “Briala is much more than a brute with a sword, Inquisitor.” 

Mirèio frowns. “Some call her a snake, though I should tell you that is the most polite thing they say.”

“Ah,” Leliana sighs, finding her throat tight, and her breath a weak, reedy thing in her chest. There is no pleasure in this for her, no joy or delight to be taken in watching such a proud creature turn sharp and bitter under the tongues of her fellow countrymen. “But I assure you, Inquisitor, the good lady Briala knows just where to bite. As do you.”

The Inquisitor smiles, and when she drifts away, Leliana keeps her white teeth and the whisper of her tread. 

The Maker has asked much of her in the past decade and she is His servant in all but one way, has given Him all but one thing – perhaps the most important thing. Her heart has been in another's hands for so long she doubts she could have a use for it were it to be returned. No, the little diver will keep Leliana's heart long after they go down into the dark together. 

Always. 

Unasked for, that ineffable moment alway spoiled by the intrusion of returning paints itself beneath her eyelids: a narrow strip of blue light breaching the warm dark of her tent, and the damp puff of breath on her neck, little fingers curled in the hem of her tunic, eyes reflective as quick-silver in the comforting, close-sewn quiet. 

_Leli-bird, Leli-bird,_ she laughs, mouth full of dust and sweetness. _Are you awake, vhenan?_

Leliana has taken the Bear's measure, and she is sure she will not find her wanting.

The Maker has a truly marvellous sense of humour. 

_Leli-bird, Leli-bird come home._

~ * ~

The elvhen women whisper as if the walls themselves have ears, eyes, and in this place perhaps it is true. She follows them by the noise of their absence, slinking through the shadows, all her pretty, useless charms tucked away in favour of silence. 

_This is wrong,_ beats away at the inside of her skull: a little hammer between her ears. _Why must I slink about like a thief? What sort of a fool trusts a Void-forsaken hedge-mage to decide the fate of an Empire by collecting petty trinkets to bully them into compliance? Why am I doing this?_

“Did you seal the vault?”

“Of course! Do you think I am stupid? I'd rather not have the Master of the Dress set to work on my back again, Yael.”

Solas is quiet beside her, but his eyes are narrow slits, and for a moment his mouth is a cruel, bitter wound on his face. Only he knows: for every lash that was, and every lash that will be, he shares a measure of the cause; the blame. 

The servants scurry off, little feet making little noise, and Mirèio wishes she could slump down to the floor, bury her head between her knees and sleep until this stinking charnel house of a palace is nothing but moss and vines and dusty sunlight filtering through gaping windows.

“Inquisitor?”

“Do you regret leaving your woods, Solas?” she asks, the warm weight of his hand on her shoulder solid enough to drag her back from the wilds.

“No,” he replies. “I regret many things, but as of yet, not that.” She is only a shemlen, but there is more in her than most, and so he must have his distance. Theirs is a careful, cultivated silence. A careful, cautious recognition. 

One pair of teeth in the grass always sees the other.

“Liar,” she laughs, soft and spiteful. “I would. I do.”

“You came from the mountains did you not?”

“Aye, I did. Seems I'll never return,” is her disjointed response. From the markets of Tolivara, Seleny and Rialto, from the stones of Dairsmuid, from the Bayt Al-Waqi, from the black sand shore beneath the Yellow House by the sea – that is where she comes from, and where she will return, one way or another. 

“I believe it is rather natural to want to return to one's home,” Solas says, watching the gold braid bounce on her shoulders. “Considering the reach of this Inquisition, I would assume a return home to be a simple thing for a woman of your mettle.”

The halla statue glows, its little horns untwisting until she can sink them into the lock. She pushes until there is a dull, muted pop and a nest of gears grinds against itself to swing the door open.

Brushing blue sparks from her coat, Mirèio steps lightly over the lip of the vault, Solas' voice echoing in the stone chamber. 

“Strange, is it not,” he laughs with little, little grin, “that this Empress would choose runed halla to be the keys to her most private of hearts?”

“I imagine the Empress has never considered it beyond its beauty,” is the best, least ugly reply she can manage. “But I tell you now, if I have to hear another word about apostates, knife-ears or rabbits, Maker help me I will burn this place to the ground for the distant chance I'll not hear one more wagging tongue.”

Solas opens his mouth, a soft huff waiting on his tongue. This woman's bitterness is a wound, and if he prods he cannot help but wonder who's hand she'll bite, or how deep. If she ever chose to make of it a sword, there would be a good harvest in the south, one long overdue. Terrible enough that he feels some hobbled manner of kinship with a quickling, odder still to wish her success, however small or fleeting. So odd indeed to find such a clever puzzle in a shape no more permanent than breath on glass. 

“Old hurts, her fingers were so warm, so thin. The clasp is old, she must tend to it. Just embers, she must be careful. Why does she tend to what she ruined?”

“Cole?” The boy pulls himself out of the shadows, the milky oval of his face shining brightly under the bitter sprawl of moonlight. He stands close to her, his breath like the shivering of a hundred little wings, and points.

Nestled in silk the colour of pulped murex is a silver locket. Mirèio scoops it up by its chain – silver as thin as a thread – and Solas laughs.

“Elvehn,” he chuckles, but he might as well have spit on the floor. “Of course it is elvhen.”

“Do you think it is stolen?”

“I think,” Solas hums, thin fingers clicking together, “that if Celene wanted something, she would have no need to steal it.” Empires do not steal, they take what is rightfully theirs, or so those who come later say. That is the privilege of the literate, the intellectual, the conqueror. That is the reward of those who live: the absolute silence of the dead. 

They leave the vault, Cole clinging to the lee of her shadow as they round a corner, and meet three white masks, three pairs of white gloved hands.

“Madame,” the first one giggles, her gloves banded in blue. She tilts her head, and the little bells at her ears shiver. “I think, perhaps, you have a need to speak with the Empress.”

“Yes,” Mirèio bites out, silver thread pooling in the palm of her hand.

“Oh dear,” the white face with pink banded gloves titters. “How curious.”

Cole stands behind her, his hands cold imprints on her skin, murmuring: “She tends it well. Just embers. She tends it well, and no one sees. Why does she tend to what she ruined?”

Oh how she hates these southerners.

~ * ~

At some untraceable juncture in the evening, Cullen had lost his sense of time. First it had been only one, then two, then four, then seven masks bobbing in a dark sea, darting in and out of his line of sight like merchant ships called home to the port. 

He coughs into his hand, fights with the need to find higher ground, or a table to stand behind. The forrest of hands grows, multiplying until they seem to pluck at the air itself, dragging fistfuls away until there is only the narrowest sliver left for him to breathe. 

A hand invades, a fingernail creeping along his outer thigh. “You are so very Fereldan, Commander. I find that most appealing.”

“You don't smell like a dog at all. And the most beautiful eyes...”

“Did you just grab my bottom?” The rage reaches up, claws at his throat, chokes him. 

The hand retreats. “I am a weak man.”

His back meets the wall hard enough to knock the air from his lungs; if he stays he will drown. 

He lurches off the wall, flattens his shoulders, and marches out into the sea of rustling finery. Mouths part, breathless; fans twitch, wrists purposefully exposed by gloves – a narrow slice of fine bones beneath soft skin that means _come now, I welcome your touch._

Fox and hare, hart and lark, their murmurings press in on him, on his chest, and he hears, “A mage, Maker save us. Not even one of those well-trained little birds they fashion in Montsimard either. An apostate.” Spit like a curse, the word feels a wound, something sharp and twisted he should not touch. Cannot touch. “Some ill bred, backwards Marcher brat.”

“Her family should be ashamed. To keep her with them, what stupidity. The Bannorn should strip her mother of her title and run her through the streets. Let the Teryn go begging for mercy at the Chantry door, as like in the old days.”

“The Grey Lady's consort is from Tolivara,” the man spits. “And those Antivans have been suckling at Rivain for an age. Poisoned, the whole of it. An Exalted March is long overdue if you ask me.”

“Such savagery,” the woman murmurs in between beats of her blackwork fan. “I would never have have expected it from you, my dear.”

“The Circles are gone, my runes are failing, and with no more Tranquil to buy them from, my crops are as bitter as my serfs. Such talk of freedom in the air, it is a disease for the lesser and they feast on it gladly. Tiresome, so tiresome.”

Cullen marches, stiff, head high, and aches for his sword. 

Turning a corner, he hears again the buzz of disrespect and derision: _Andraste could not possibly have chosen an apostate. All this talk of mages, of freedom, it's nothing but madness and lies. She plays at high court with a Tevinter pariah and a filthy, knife-eared apostate by her side._ All there is to be had from these mouths is lesser, lesser, lesser. The coals in his belly burn him, and every breath is fire, the bitterest rage, because he knows, oh he knows: once he kept a tongue like theirs. 

A quiet cup of laughter draws him out of the fire pit he's flung himself into, the edge of Josephine's gilt train leading him forward. 

“Commander?” Josephine calls, her fingers a careful distance away from the cuff of his sleeve. 

He nods, and her fingers close around his forearm. 

“Tell me, Commander, how do you like the evening so far?” Cookies and silk are little things, but she is not here at the head of this venture because she gives pretty gifts. The man is shaking, coming apart at the seams, and she does not know him well enough to understand where to pull, or what to push, or how to stitch all these red edges together again. Pity that she can't.

“Distract me,” Cullen blurts out, red raw inside and hot faced. “Lady Montilyet, I will cause a diplomatic incident if you do not.”

“I beg your pardon, Commander, but what is...” Her shock is eaten up by the galloping pulse she finds in the hollow of his wrist. “Maker, Cullen.”

“Have you heard the way they are speaking of her?” Anger tangles him up, twists into outrage until he's breathing smoke, choking on coals and searching for a body to spit them at, if only to satisfy some hungry thing in him that aches to silence such familiar slander. 

_Mages are not people like you and I, Champion. They are weapons, and should be treated as such. We have dominance over then by divine right._

No. Not here. Not now. He pushes his own words away, shamed and small and clinging to Josephine's arm. 

Somewhere, Hawke must be laughing. 

“Ah,” the woman sighs, eyes lowered for a moment. “Yes. I was – I had hoped for better.”

The din of the ballroom grows, pushes against the sudden ringing of tower bells that mark the hour of eleven, and in the noise Cullen feels an answering echo, as if he is as riven as the air in the tower: a bell once struck, now ringing with its own silence. It distracts from the anger, from the white-edged rage that licks at the edges of his mind. His stone walls are high as ever, and it seems he is content to tend to the wrong seeds with a single minded focus. Again.

_Why am I not better?_ sticks in his throat, chokes him. _Why can I not leave these thoughts alone?_

_The dirt is poisoned, fool._ Her fingers curl over the knots in his spine, cold and burning and frightfully soft. _You can't grow good things in poisoned earth. You're a ruin and she knows it. You're not like her. She grows good things with a breath. Your only crop is what the sword provides._

Away. Away. Away.

_The garden smells of herbs, of black earth and embrium, and apples. The garden is green, green even behind your eyes. The garden is warm, stays on your skin. Her table is black, the bottles are little, and they make noise in the wind. The garden has four cherry trees, two balsa, two olive. Two plots of vegetables. Three of herbs and flowers. The bark is rough beneath your hands. The glass opens for you alone._

_Your earth is poisoned, Templar._

_Away. Go away!_ he wishes to shout. He bites his tongue instead.

“Commander?” Josephine's little hand digs into his forearm and Cullen comes back into his body with a thump, lungs a mess of sodden, too-quiet breaths. 

“So did I. For better.” Cullen forces out – breathing in the dust of a strange grief – and he cannot be sure if he is speaking of the guests, or of himself. He blinks, and the light of Halamshiral turns to glass threads. 

“Come,” Josephine says, her fingers more a fist and certainly not gentle, “there is a little – little room...” The beads on her slippers make noise in her haste, the train of her dress snapping at her ankles.

Cullen lets himself be led down a hallway so vast the ceiling is murky darkness above his head: empty bellies the glass thread light cannot reach. Distantly he hears the click of a door being shut and Josephine's little hand returns. 

“Sit,” she commands. 

He does. The couch is soft, stuffed just so, and Cullen chokes on his rage, on the opulence of this place, on its artful cruelty and its lush, well painted condemnations that sound like honest truths. 

A flash of white and she presses something soft and warm into his hands, her little fingers closing over his almost comically, they are so small. “Cullen.” 

She does not touch his face; his grief is not hers to tend to.

Cullen looks down, finds a soft square of cotton in his hands, a little butterfly the colour of honeysuckle and lilac stitched into one corner. “Josephine,” he starts, but the ache in his throat is too sharp, too bloody.

_The garden is green. Green even behind your eyes. The white rope leads to the orchard. The path is narrow. Only her feet, yours, Dorian's. Between the beech trees. The cherry tree. Rough bark. Balsa. Olive. Cypress. Rain on the wind. Runes bring water. Close to your skin. Table is black. Little bottles._

Silence is hard thing to negotiate, perhaps the hardest skill to master, but Josephine has never been less than the most eager of students. She sits down beside him, the space of one cushion between them, and waits. 

Cullen feels the weight of his quiet in his bones, spends a moment to move the dust of his rage into the darker corners of his mind. If he tends to it at all, it will be later. Always later. The little square is twisted in his big hands and he is sorry to have made a ruin of such a fine thing – and if that is not precisely the story of his life he would laugh until his grief crushed his lungs to pink-red pulp. 

“Forgive me,” he murmurs, holding the little butterfly under his thumb. “I do not know what came over me. Crowds have always been a discomfort.”

Josephine nods, grateful for the echo of his voice, even if it is no more lively than a shattered lyre, all its strings spilling loose and useless. “Think nothing of it, my friend.” She spins her threads, and lets him choose when next to speak. 

Cullen stares at the fine leather of his boot tops, the little butterfly still under his thumb, and wonders at where his voice has fled, how far he's fallen in her eyes. More than that, he tries not to feel the absence of yellow silk and the scent of oranges. 

“I suppose,” he begins with a crude imitation of a grin, “I am worried for her. She said, we spoke in the woods, only for a moment and – ah, I am terrible at this. Forgive me.”

Josephine's hand comes up, cuts through the still air and the pools of waxy yellow candle light. “As I said,” she soothes, “think nothing of it.” 

A lifetime of certainty and routine played out in disjointed memories of bellowed commands and the weight of a hand on his shoulder, and it would seem three years is enough time to turn his mind to rebellion when it is his own commands he would follow. Josephine is Mirèio's friend – Princesa held in a laughing mouth, the clink of lace-fine china, butter and sugar and fire-finches stitched round his throat – and if he is to trust any, it is her.

He coughs, fingers digging into the collar at his throat. “We, we talked of tonight, and she told me something strange. She has not broached such a subject before, and I – I did not know how to respond.”

“Oh?”

Cullen gathers a breath, draws the air between the narrow slice of his teeth, tasting dust and good beeswax and soot. “She told me she had never been a mage in the south, here, with these people. That she was worried.”

“Oh.” And Josephine's voice pops, folds in around a little puncture just large enough to leak sorrow onto her tongue. “Oh I see.”

“Do you?” Cullen laughs, bitterness staining down his chin, down his chest. “Because, I must confess, I do not.” No, no that is a lie. He does see. He sees out the corner of one eye, as if glimpsing something wretched, but rather than witnessing it in full, he recoils.

Josephine must remind herself that Cullen's grief is not hers to touch, and so she chews on her words, works through her threads for something he will accept from her hands. “Did you know, Commander, that I knew her before all this? Before the Inquisition?” 

Cullen blinks, takes note of how soft the white cotton is in his hands. “Did you?”

“Yes,” Josephine begins. “When I was,” she hums, “not quite eleven summers old, my family thought it would be wise to broaden our alliances, and there are only a handful of Houses in the Marches with connections to a Gremio.”

“That is a guild maintained by merchant-princes and their family, yes?”

“Sí,” she sighs. “So they bundled myself and my siblings off with my uncle and for a good number of years we attended at every notable gathering in the south we could manage. I was thirteen, and terribly bored, and I remember so clearly all the children, and the older ones hoping for a dancing partner, they started muttering. I thought them so strange. What bear? I laughed. Why would there be a bear at the Bloomingtide fete?”

Cullen stills, cotton and butterfly still twisted in his hands. 

Josephine claps her hands together, the fall of gold hung beneath her ears pouring bright threads across her bare shoulders. “And there she was, drifting through the crowd.” She puffs her chest out, shoulders firm and her spine ramrod straight. “So stiff and tall and cold. But then she laughed, and, well, you know that little smile.”

He does: a crooked shape, rakish and silver-bell bright. 

Cullen finds Josephine's memory is a rather easy image to piece together: hawkish, gimlet eyes in a soft, young face. Long limbs imprecise, but already turned to strength. The black earth lilt of her voice still green and reedy. A bristling cub, with all its promising teeth, roaming through a sea of neatly tended, pink-cheeked flowers. 

He smiles, despite himself. 

“She hardly spoke, but then she hardly needed to,” Josephine says, grinning slow and wry.

“Why not?” Cullen asks, the answer already on his tongue.

“She has always been quite handsome,” is her prim reply, laughter lurking in the little creases round her eyes. “I never understood why she was so cold. When I was younger I simply thought her arrogant, but now I think I see a little better. So, Commander, you must ask yourself this: why should she take pleasure in the company of those who hate her for what she is?”

Shame heats his face as if someone has raised their gauntleted hand high and struck him across his cheek hard enough to draw blood. Hate is an ugly word, but its syllables fit in his mouth as if its shape never left. He understands now: the truth only half glanced at, his recoiling. Beyond her home in the mountains, beyond Ostwick, what does the South hold for her other than ignorance and hatred? What might she have from the south that is not a terrible insult to her?

“Perhaps that is why she never speaks of her home,” Josephine continues. “I know she has been to Antiva, Nevara, even Llomeryn, but she never says who she knows there, or what she has done. Getting her to speak of Rivain is like prying teeth from a dragon's mouth, you might as well give up the hand before you make the attempt.”

Cullen does not want to laugh, he doubts the sound would leave like proper laughter even if he did, but there is a bitter humour in him regardless of his intentions. “She is rather consistent in that unwillingness, my lady.”

“Have you not wondered why?” Josephine asks, her gloved palm folding over Cullen's faintly trembling knee. “I know I do. All those letters to Rivain, to the Ghana of the Bayt Al-Waqi.”

“Mage business,” Cullen mutters. “She said it was mage business, and nothing I need trouble myself over.”

Josephine snorts, patting Cullen's knee. “She said much the same when I asked.”

Why should she make herself smaller? Why should a line drawn across a map reduce her so? Why should she endure the cruel tongues of others in silence? 

Why should any mage?

_Why do I still believe in the Circle?_

_Why am I still afraid?_

Now he fears the answers will cost him more than blood.

“Did you dance with her?” It is a simple question, but the little things that live under the words are strange, difficult shapes to grapple with. 

“A few times, yes,” Josephine smiles. 

They sit together for half an hour, until the tower-bell strikes twelve. 

~ * ~ 

Celene owns a voice as soft as river stones, and a face built of gold and silver tinctures slicked over water. She lies with such grace it is almost admirable.

“It is a little thing, of little import Inquisitor. Do with it as you wish.”

_The clasp is thin. She must tend to it. Only embers. Thin fingers on blue, my lady I am yours. O lady mine, you wear my heart. Tend to it softly. Hyacinth in her hair, little rabbit in the garden. She tastes sweet, sweet lady mine._

Mirèio swallows, closes her fist round the little trinket in her hand, and tastes ash in her mouth. Celene's fingers are little, thin, knuckles red with age and strain. What is she clinging to, if not the wilted remains of all she had when young? 

Call no man happy 'til he be dead. Call no man good 'til the scholars write his name in the marginalia of some other fool's history. 

Celene is an artful liar, but she is still a liar – just like her cousin with the jackdaw eyes. 

“I heard a strange rumour, Your Majesty.”

“Did you?” Celene smiles, tinctures shifting over water. “I think you will find my court a particularly fruitful garden for such things.”

Mirèio tucks the locket away. “I am told you burned Halamshiral's alienage to the ground, Majesty, because some pretty actor in borrowed finery implied you were too kind to lowly rabbits.” 

Celene raises her head, gold between the blades of her thin shoulders, and if it is grief or resignation or the most delicately painted mockery of regret, no one may decide. “Inquisitor, how do you treat a wound, or a mangled limb? When the fever climbs, what is the surgeon to do?”

The woman's audacity strikes Mirèio square between the brows, and her face darkens, red mouth turning pale and flat. “Citizens are not a body, Majesty,” she spits.

“To save all Orlais, étranger, I would light that torch again.”

_Coward_ is the kindest word she knows for a woman like Celene: a gleaning mind laid in a pretty, misleading shape. A fine thing bent, twisted by the throne she covets. A better word is monster. Vile, self-serving wretch. Liar. There is a reason Marchers suffer no king. 

“That you believe you cut out the weakest, the least of your body's limbs,” Mirèio curses, “speaks more of you, Majesty, than it does anything else.” 

“As I said, Inquisitor, do what you will with the trinket. Some luxuries are beyond even my reach,” Celene inclines her head, careful to make no noise as she departs. Who knew such a little thing could be so weighty? Then again, it has long since been just another bit of iron tied round her ankles. She can ignore the weight. She must. “I would have thought a woman in your position more than capable of understanding such things.”

La Lionne de Valmont retreats on silent feet, the great blue river of her gown bobbing between pools of candlelight and her petite hire gliding behind her, and Mirèio cannot help but think herself lost to some terrible nightmare. 

“You are angry,” Cole murmurs, pulling himself out of the shadows, Solas' carefully blank face hovering behind his shoulder, strangely disconnected. “Why are you angry? Like stones in you mouth. No where to spit. No shield. Teeming with lies, they are all so small, so narrow. Narrow lives. You hate them. You don't want them to see you.”

“Cole, can we speak of something else?” There's so little left in her for kindness, for a steady hand, and her threads are frayed beyond hope of repair. Her boots echo, Cole and Solas too-quiet in the wake of her faintly jingling tread. Scivias is an absence she feels on her skin, in her bones. To be so defenceless among so many beasts is no easy thing. 

“Yes,” the boy replies. He points out into the distance, into the mouth of one densely crowded hall, and says: “Cullen is afraid. They’re hunting him, following fear. He shouldn’t be here.”

Mirèio blinks, a red-soaked stone pushing up into her throat so savagely she can't find her breath. 

“Wait!” Cole breathes. 

“Find me Briala,” she barks, even as her hands grasp the empty air at her hip.


	17. for Caesar's I am

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've divided the porn in this chapter because it ended up being obscenely long. If you are only interested in the porn, please feel free to skip this chapter and head straight to the next, which I am posting at the same time as this one.

~ * ~

The moment Josephine departs, he begins to collect people like burrs. 

Hands arrive unconnected to arms, white darts peaking and receding in the narrow corners of his vision. Voices murmur, chortle, jostle for some scrap of attention against the din in his ears.

A solitary finger tracks along his spine, nail running loud against the red cambric at his back. 

He bites his tongue, tastes blood. Teeth grinding together, he bites the inside of his cheek, takes the pain in hand and shapes a bright, grounding lance to pierce the fog in his brain. 

“Commander,” it giggles. “Did you come alone?”

Her hands are claws, long, white, and whisper thin. Her teeth rattle in her mouth. A shadow passes over the moon and she walks through its absence, the click, click clicking of her talons skittering across the wood floor loud, so loud. She moves without joints, a rictus of limbs like some crude parody of flesh. She moves as if the fear in his breath is the only means of dragging herself forward. 

If he does not breathe, she will go. 

Shewillgoshewillgoshewillgo.

_Leave me._

“Commander, you've finished your drink.”

She recedes: a tide pulled out into the dark. 

“Shall I get you another?” a fox face leers at him, fangs sharp against ruddy skin. 

“No,” he manages. The hand retreats.

She will go. She will – 

Dorian's laughter pours smoke into the buzzing in his head, and Cullen all but flees towards the sound on weak knees. Halamshiral leaps and wobbles – a gyre on a frayed string – and he isn't sure he will keep himself upright long enough to reach the table.

He blinks, lungs a'rattle, and Dorian's fingers close round his elbow. In his haste to escape, he stumbles just enough to crack his knee against the crystal laden table. The feast of champagne and lacy pastry shivers, squeals, and he suffers under a dozen score pairs of staring eyes and snapped threads of conversation. Shame licks at his face and he makes to disappear back into the bustle, but Dorian's fingers stay rooted at his elbow. 

“Commander?” 

The black-water tide rolls in, rolls out. Dorian's grip turns strong enough to bruise, and Cullen digs his fingers under the glove on his right hand, search, searching. The sting is still there. This is real. Not that. Not her. Not those hands. 

“Are you well, Cullen?”

“Yes,” he lies as blithely as he can. 

“Liar,” Dorian chuckles, pushing a flute of bubbling champagne from the dusty purple hills of Falerna into the man's shaking hands. “You're absolutely terrible at it. I knew you needed training. A good, solid year in Tevinter would clear that rosy, dreadfully obvious honesty of yours right up.”

“Really?” Cullen laughs, the noise giddy and twisted up high enough to make the root of his tongue tremble.

“Yes, but that would be such a shame. I rather like that honesty.”

“I'm not,” plops down red and ugly between his feet and Dorian's. Courteously, the man gives it no acknowledgement, simply moving ahead, head ever high. “Truly, my friend, I am not.”

Dorian snorts, knocks back his drink in one gulp. “There you go again, amicus: lying.” These Maker forsaken Fereldans: so fixated on that antiquated notion – as if the world has ever been well served by unflinching honesty. Lies are sometimes kinder than the truth. Sometimes, lies are more important than the truth. Of course, this does not mean they are _right_ , or _just_ , or _good._ Only that they are useful. 

“I'm not,” he laughs, steadier than before, “but I am trying.” He isn't. Maker, he isn't. Honest men do not stand beside the ones they profess to care for wearing red to their elbows. Honest men do not take silence as an excuse to remain thus. 

“Shall I go fetch...” 

“No. I'll be alright.” And, Andraste preserve him, it is only half a lie.

Dorian's steady hand falls away, his face caught between resignation and fondness. “The Bull is over by the punch-bowl, if you feel the need for more stimulating conversation. He's brought some sort of qunari liquor with him. From the stories Aclassi tells, that dross will take you straight to the Maker's own golden throne. If you drink enough of it, of course.”

“Thank you, Dorian. But I'll manage myself just fine.”

“What a terrible liar you are, ser.” Dorian's hand is warm on his shoulder, and Cullen has never been more grateful for a naked face than right now, here in this forrest of wicked eyes. “Perseverance my friend,” is the little parting gift he gives before he parts the seas and disappears into the crowd.

Cullen returns to his post with warm words curling beneath his ribs, clasps his hands behind his back, and waits. And waits, and waits. Time sifts through his fingers, runs like mud and ticks like a knife against wood – marking notches made of idleness and discomfort. 

It doesn't take more than a quarter hour for the fox face to return. The man edges nearer, leans a little closer, the white dart of its hand flashing out to touch and Cullen braces himself, the world turning foamy white, echoing. The hand glides, softly, softly sweet, and he sees a lacy red veil slowing drying black against her shoulder; pink lips and white, white teeth; the shadow of her horns hid behind a crown of rosemary and clover. 

_Oh ser, oh sweet, I've come home. I've missed you so. Did you not miss me, sweet?_

The hand is at his shoulder before she gives him back the use of his tongue. The fox-courtier's mouth is so close he can taste the man's little sigh of a question. “Are you married, Commander?”

Cullen stumbles, reaching for high-climbing walls. “No, not yet.” He chokes on what he wants to say, and thinks his tongue a traitor. “But I am already...” 

“Commander,” cuts down his spine – through the crowd and her red veil – hard enough to make him taste the memory of road-dust and dragon's blood in his mouth. 

In the bare moment between his breath and hers, Cullen is wretchedly grateful for his years as a good little templar, because he needs every scrap of self-control he has not to bleat out his relief like some lost little thing its shepherd has come to collect.

“Come with me,” she demurs, extending an arm.

Mirèio's face is cold, all her rough and rakish grace pushed far, far away; the black-water tide recedes, and he pretends he cannot hear her claws click-click skittering across the wood, even as he falls into step with her long strides. Looking behind, he tells himself there are not three white masks following them, each with a pair of white hands edged in candy-coloured silk. He tells himself none of them have horns, none of them are bones stitched into bruise coloured skin. 

“Don't,” she hisses. “Don't acknowledge them.”

“Who are they?” he asks. 

“Handmaidens,” Mirèio grunts, picking up her pace. “Apparently it is unwise to dangle old memories under an Empress' nose.” 

Forcing his eyes back to the dark, echoing hallway, Cullen tells himself there's nothing licking at their heels. Better if it is just too much champagne, and too many hands; not enough air; no more lyrium; never enough quiet. A hundred reasons other than the chance he's losing his hold on reality. 

She is not here. She has never been here. She is not real. 

He blinks and the door is rattling shut, her fist a dark blotch against its pristine, white facade. He blinks again, and a little of the white tingling in his body falls away. 

“I'm sorry,” she murmurs, forehead pressed to the door. 

He doesn't want that word in her mouth. “Sorry?” he laughs, half a gurgle of hysteria. “What, what in the Maker's Name, are you apologizing for?” 

Mirèio opens her mouth and finds nothing. “I am not entirely sure,” she says, stumbling as if the rest of her is still somewhere far away. “I – you did not look yourself and I reacted. I did not ask. Did you want me to do that?” 

Cullen has not a thought to his reply, all his words mulish and unresponsive, scattered. He finds her face too smooth, reflective: a woman waiting for a familiar ruin. 

“What happened, joli? You look as if you've seen a demon.” 

Something terrible must wriggle past his high walls, because she looks at him as if he's been gutted and left to hold his own red innards. Without a word she shivers away, regret loud in the slump of her shoulders. 

The absence of her warmth turns what sense is left in his head into a stinging knot of alarm he desperately wants to silence. _Where are you going?_ he panics, bit to the bone by a familiar despair. _Where are you going?_

Satinalia comes roaring back, flings its' smoke and honey over his eyes: the hiss of red wax and the little token in his hands, her fingers curled around his chin. _By your leave, joli,_ skittering down his spine to hunker in the twist of his guts. She has never offered him a touch, her hand, a kiss, her fingers round his cock or his tongue in her cunt without a _yes_ from his mouth. 

“You always ask,” he manages, a wretched lurch shrinking his voice to nothing. “I am grateful for that. Beyond measure, Mirèio.”

He hasn't answered anything; she stares at him, bereft, and he still does not answer. He feels his silence like blood leaking from a new, red mouth. All this silence, all these red wounds, they turn his fingers sticky, twist his heartbeat into a dizzy flitter-thump. Sense dictates he can't keep his hand there forever.

“I afford that consideration to everyone, joli,” Mirèio replies, half a smile hanging on her mouth. “Mostly in the blind hope that the same will be extended to me, when it truly matters.”

“Oh,” he adds, feeling the arrow of her words between his ribs. Sometimes he forgets that she was not a rebel mage, but came to them by chance, and took no part in the turmoil in the south from her quiet, nearly forgotten corner of the Marches. She never asked to be here. Never chose. At least he was given the chance to come to the Inquisition, to do better. 

Not for the first time, he wonders if there was any choice afforded to her all all. 

The little balcony's doors creak open and Cullen watches her become a bent shape, her bare back the only soft thing she has left. There is no part of him that desires to share that softness, and he cannot abide the thought of others reaching out to run their gloved fingers over silk hollow of her spine. 

By the time he reaches her, he is resolved to tell her as much, but the words he wants her to have are rough stones in his mouth – no polish to them at all. 

“Cullen?”

So many things unsaid, unasked.

He tries. “I haven't any idea what I want to say to you, or what I should tell you.” She laughs, and it is not enough to settle the roving sharpness beneath his ribs. 

“What bothered you more, joli: the touching, or that they did not ask?” That is as far as she is willing to push, considering there is no time and they are not genuinely alone and there is still much work to be done. No time to poke at bruises, or scabs, or whatever this is that's turned Cullen's face into a ruin. 

“Both,” he breathes. She makes a contemplative noise, and it's far too gentle for his liking. “It was crowded and – and for a moment, I forgot where I was.”

“Where did you think you were?” That red stone has shot back up into her throat, but she suspects it's not a stone but her heart, or her lungs, or whatever vital part of her that is terrified to hear what horrors he's keeping to himself. 

“Kinloch.” Just the word, the shape of it, makes him cold, numbs the tips of his fingers until even the little veins beneath his face are bloodless and tingling. 

The barrier crackles, her claws click-click skittering across the floor. _Give me what I want, and I'll give you back your home. I'll give you her._

He blinks, fingers still numb. 

“Oh,” leaves her mouth in a nerveless bleat. Cullen stands beside her, leans nearer with every moment, and she has no idea if he wants to be touched or if he wants to run or what in the Maker's holy, mighty Throne actually happened to him in that place. It would seem she is back to stumbling in the dark. 

“Mirèio?” 

“Do you want to tell me?” 

“Yes,” he manages, feeling words to be an inhuman effort. “No,” his tongue falters. “No. It is not easy for me to speak of it. I would...not yet.” What he'd begged her to do, the naked cruelty he'd pleaded with her for – these things haunt him even now, with a decade and two tower's distance between. He does not feel the heat of Mirèio's gloved palm until it is hovering over the curve of his cheek, a frail question in her grey eyes. Some indistinct shape weighs down his tongue; she drops her hand and he is sorry, he is angry, he is lost. 

Blinking hard, he reaches out, desperate to have back what she offered, only to find her hands unwinding the silk at her waist, clever fingers picking at the knots of her Blood and her House, her Marcher pride. 

“I can't offer you much, joli, but this may help.” In her fist is a wrinkled sash just like the one she's undone: Trevelyan yellow. “These people do not respect me as a Marcher, as my mother's daughter, but I am still the Inquisitor, and it may be enough.”

“What?” Cullen breathes, sorrow winking in his throat like a fishhook. He reaches out, and finds the silk is frightfully warm in his fingers. “So you've heard then? Heard their slander?” 

She grunts, brushes aside his question with a flick of her wrist. Now is not the time to tell let that old rage slip its leash. “Tie it round like your blue one.” Managing her words as if stood on a precipice, she keeps her focus on the colour shared between them. It would be best not to think of this as anything but a moment's comfort. Better not to hope, and so be disappointed by the inevitable. “And I shall tie the knots. If it is your wish,” she adds.

“My wish?” he says, tongue sharper than he intends. “Do you not care for the consequences? I am not high born.” 

“And I am a mage,” she fires back, wearing a fearsome sneer. “Consequences? Why should I care? Why should you?” 

“Simple as that?” Cullen steps into her space, and the welcome she offers is warm enough to spear him through. To have that here? Longing and sorrow make strange bedfellows. Yellow pinned between his fingers, he waits until her hands find the blue at his waist, and the only sound is their mingled breath laid under the watery rustle of silk. 

Her touch hitches his breath high, all the world a strung through a single eyelet, and Cullen loses himself in faint press of her fingers, in the tugging, in the way she clips her tongue between her teeth as she ties. This moment will live with him for a long time to come: her face bare and earnest, hand sharing out the rote movements that make her who she is. All this she gives to him as if it is a trinket, and not an immeasurable gift he does not deserve. 

The last knot is set, but her hands stay heavy on his hips, her breath ghosting warm and wine-sweet over his cheek. 

“Joli,” she whispers, “now you look a proper Northern Marcher. One of House Trevelyan's own.” Stupid, sentimental, and well she knows it. There won't be another opportunity to see him wearing her colours, so she'll take what she can get. 

She has learned to live with her wanting, and learned well. 

Her smile is so small. Cullen wants to bracket his fingers around it, breathe it brighter with his own, but he is unsure if she would appreciate the attempt. “What does it mean?”

“Ah.” Mirèio exhales, a slow leaking of uncertainty. “Well, it means whatever you would like it to mean, joli.”

Cullen frowns; knowing her better now than he did a year ago, he understands she is unsure, that she will give him whatever she _thinks_ he wants to hear. “Just.” He stumbles, unsure. “Just tell me this is no slight to your reputation.”

Outrage touches her cheeks and she hisses, spitting out the cut up ends of her anger. “My reputation! What reputation? You have heard as well as I have. Marchers are little better than dirt to the the glittering Houses of Orlais, never mind mages.”

Another knot of grief he cannot undo. “Does it not bother you, their slander?”

Mirèio's shoulders pin up to her ears. “I've heard such talk all my life.”

Cullen opens his mouth, intent on sharing his outrage, but the hard, gleaning edge of her gaze seals him up.

“The only difference, joli, is that now the stones aimed at me, instead of others. You should hear how they speak of Solas. Or Sera. Or Bull. When it all washes out, I'm rather fortunate.”

“Fortunate?” Cullen nearly bellows, anger glowing, burning like veil-fire in the dark. “One of those, those insufferable frogs said your mother should be stripped of her Seat and made to run naked through the streets!”

Laughter bursts from her mouth, high and dark. “Oh.” She chuckles as if there is a slick little blade on her tongue. “Oh I should like to see them try.” 

“I hardly think laughter is appropriate,” Cullen mutters sour and stung, fingers running along the edge of his new yellow sash.

“If you knew my mother, you would think laughter the only answer.” For comfort's sake Mirèio plucks at a smile again. Sadly, it is only a little wider than before. “I may get my height from my father, but my teeth, well,” she laughs again, with a little more honestly than before, “they are very much hers.”

The yellow is vivid against his red coat, complicated knots trailing across his hip into two short tails. Following the ridges and valleys, he marvels at the winding tale written across his frame, wondering at what it says and what it means and who will pay for this act of kindness – until her fingers find his. 

“They'll think you my lover, or they'll think you my champion.” Her black glove is stark against the yellow, as is the faint tremor of her hand. “Or they'll think nothing at all because what value does Marcher custom hold in Orlais? But they may leave you be, and keep their hands to themselves. It's the best I can give you.”

“The best you can give me is better than most,” Cullen says, before his mouth snaps shut with an audible click. He feels his accidental honesty across his cheeks, his neck, his shoulders – all of it far too naked to share in a pompous, candy-coloured Orlesian study ripe with silence and gold-trim. Too naked for this stolen moment, when no proper answer can be given. “I am glad for it,” he finishes, feeling lame and limping. 

Her smile brightens, a fragile unfurling that makes her face strange, and gentle. “Be safe,” she whispers against his mouth, soft, and softly stung. 

When the forest of noise and white darts unfurls again and all that's left to him is her back and the heat of her goodbye on his lips, Cullen tells himself it's enough to see him through to the end of this charade. 

But he is starting to understand just one thing: he is not an honest man. 

~ * ~

Blunt as the pommel of her blade: “Tell me what you want.” There is no more patience to be had for anything so mincing as courtly decorum; she is too tired of shambling around this place like a carcass picked to the bone for any greater subtlety.

“Why should a stranger like you care at all for what I want?” Briala spits, a ward and a warning. The sharp points of her mask turn her into something much more than a elvhen woman in a pretty dress: a clever bird with claws long enough to suit any predator. “Who are you to offer me anything?”

“The Right High and Most Holy Inquisitor Trevelyan, or so your Empress' pages tell me. Whatever you think of the Inquisition, do not doubt that I am more than capable of delivering on my promises.” She leaves out the part where she abandoned an ancient order to their utter corruption because she could not abide their existence. On a whim. On an old, old hatred. 

“Arrogant drunkard,” Briala snorts, tucking her arms closer to her chest. “I'm shocked they managed to prop you up long enough to get you into that fine outfit.” _Shem_ hangs in the air, close enough for blood. Useless, ignorant blue-blooded noble fool. 

Her smile is bent, sliding into bitterness. “But it is the truth, Lady Briala. Tell me what you want, and you will have it. An alliance? Yours.” Mirèio waves her hand, offering. “You want Celene's head? Yours. Gaspard's? As you wish.”

“Why?”

“You know there are blades in the crowd, yes?” 

Briala frowns, fingers still curled around her elbows. 

“You know one of them is for Celene.” 

“And if I do?”

Mirèio sighs, cold to her bones; there's a greasy black roiling in her guts she cannot explain, and it is slowly eating away at her – shoulders, neck and spine. She feels a pretty ruin: a child stuffed into a fine bit of cloth for no greater purpose than to be measured by those higher than she. “Do you want the demon you know, or the one you do not?”

Briala stiffens, anger burning white in her face before she crushes that honesty to ash. “You, stranger, have no idea what I've suffered. You have no stake in protecting the elves of Halamshiral. Can you give me the alienage in Val Royeaux? Title to the Dales?”

“No,” Mirèio replies. “But I can give you the strings of the one who can. The Inquisition needs Orlais to be at peace. And quite frankly, my Lady, I do not care beyond that need.”

“That is...” Briala chews at the inside of her cheek, pouring water over the fire of her words. “That is shockingly honest. You are not good at this, Inquisitor. In fact, you're quite terrible.”

Finding her silver beneath the bitterness, Mirèio sweeps an arm out, bowing low to a crowd of one. “Thank you, my lady. In this, I'm very glad to be awful.”

A huff of laughter drier than sand, and Briala turns away, attention flung out to the gardens and the clinging, spring-damp dark. “We can help one another, I think.” She does not think of fire. Not once. The smell lives in her marrow, but she does not think of fire. Her mind does not dwell on Celene's white, naked neck; her eyes do not trace the frail hills of her shoulders, or the iron of her mouth collapsing under Halamshiral's wailing, tide-like grief. 

Hating is meant to be simple, but once there had been more, and the brackets in her life filled by that _more_ leave her aching fresh, with only her carefully tended rage as company. She would rather apathy. Apathy would be a kindness. 

“She kept your locket.”

Briala struggles, but the fire rises, ruin heaped upon ruin. “I wish she had not.” 

Mirèio holds out her hand, silver winking in her palm, and Briala stares at the locket as if it were the gore of a spear digging, digging deep; she looks as if there is blood in her mouth. The moment unspools: ugly, frayed threads tangling between outstretched hands, and a brittle sensation not unlike despair pushes up from the sour mess under her ribs. This is not her right, not her place, not her people. 

“Your Empress called it a trinket. But I must confess, my Lady, I rather call it a lie.”

The silver is thin, the clasp well worn; Briala tucks it away, and does not think of lavender in cornsilk hair, or blood on wooden floors, or the stink of burning flesh.

“The demon you know, eh?” Briala must remind herself: justice is useless to the dead, and she will have what is owed, by blade or by feather bed. 

~ * ~

The hour shuffles by on crooked legs; the fox mask returns, hook-eyed and predatory. Cullen holds himself in, breath moving thin between his lips, but the silk wrapped around his waist proves a loud enough rattle to send the man scurrying for cover. Rather than a sea of white-dart hands, he finds nervous titters and down turned smiles, clusters of fans snapping in irritation. Whatever disrespect he heard, it would appear that some Marcher customs do hold water, even in this pitiless desert. 

Strange; he finds it strange. Good, but strange. However good it might feel, Cullen cannot sort away the why. Why has she offered such a thing to him? Loyalty he understands, loyalty he _knows_ , but this is not loyalty. This colour has graced the lintels, the spears, the banners, the cradles of House Trevelyan for centuries. This colour is Blood, and Right, and Name, not some trifle meant to alleviate his momentary discomfort.

He watches her dance with a duchess as pale and cold as young spring ice, a reedy mirror to Celene's pained and painted majesty, and cannot understand. Why, why the silk? Why her banner draped over his shoulder, tied round his hips? For comfort? For claim? Because she is the daughter of a high House, and can do as she pleases?

No, no not that. Nothing so crude.

He knows what this is, but to say it aloud would give his frail hope a tangible weight; once the word lives in something other than silence, he cannot have it back. Kirkwall taught him that much. Time and distance have not crumbled the shame he built for himself in the Gallows, and it will not die quite so easily as the ugliness of his tongue.

Across the gleaming marble floor she spins the lacy, winged concoction of a woman in her arms, a crude parody of her rakish grin on her handsome face, and Cullen cannot help the longing that bubbles up, hot and vicious. 

The duchess laughs and fingers tighten round his throat, slick claws stitched out of anger and smallness and absence. If he were like the duchess, Titled and fine-blooded, there would be no question of why – the silk would speak for itself. 

If he were a different man, and this were a different world, there would be no hiding. 

Cullen turns away from the whirling, from the eyes that cling to her declaration splashed across his chest, and he raises his shield against their arrows even as they push in to drink his thin blood. Charlatans, fools, all of them. He will not be counted among their number, no matter how easily he remembers just how alike his ignorance was to theirs. 

The music swells and Cullen catches her eye. Strings of misery jangling in the space between his shadow and hers, he lifts his chin, hoping to remind her: he is not here for their sport, and neither is she. 

“She's made her choice, you know.” Leliana steps lightly, half in shadow and clinging to a little grin. 

“Has she?”

“Yes. Very much so.”

“You seem rather sure of yourself, sénéchal. Is there a reason for that?” Spite is not quite the right word, but sour is too generous; they are colleagues, nothing more. She does not like his methods, he does not like hers, and so a polite smile must serve them both. 

“Those who have known cruelty at the hands of strangers do not often wish to visit it on others,” Leliana replies, hands pinned neatly behind her back. “Why would she choose the Chevaliers now, when she left the Templars to their ruin for that same reason? She did not choose cruelty before. She will not do so now.”

“Cruel? The Order is not cruel.” Cullen scoffs, his fingers picking at yellow silk. “They have only forgotten their true purpose.”

“You do not believe that,” Leliana replies, the narrowest glint of humour on her mouth. “Or you would not have such a fine colour to wear.” 

“The Order is not _meant_ to be cruel. The Templars have not behaved as they were meant to, Leliana. Andraste's sword is one of mercy. They have only forgotten.” 

Now it is Leliana's turn to scoff, derision flickering and dying in the serene mask of her face. “Perhaps you should have come with us to Val Royeaux. The Lord Seeker struck that Revered Mother as if she were a dog in the streets.”

Cullen flushes, shame digging in with a greedy vengeance. Leliana is porcelain perfect, mouth sedate but poised for blood, and he cannot help but wonder if she aims her blows so well in the field. He wonders if he is bleeding, somewhere. It would certainly explain the hot trickling in his chest. 

An elvhen servant glides by, arms filled with neat rows of lavender, and Leliana smiles. 

“She is nothing like her. I am glad, for your sake.”

Cullen grits his teeth, heat racing out to cloud his cheeks and his lungs and his shaking hands; the world spins, mad, leaping images that crack across his eyes and turn his breath to water. 

_Please, they must die. All of them._

_They must die._

“He knows our hearts, Commander. He provides, as we need. No more, and no less.”

“Sénéchal.” Clinging to yellow and the good, dark earth, he bends. “In the Maker we trust.”

“Yes,” Leliana replies, glass-cut chuckle as sharp as ever. “He has a splendid sense of humour, as I am sure you are aware.”

Mirèio bends the duchess down, down to the polished floor; Florianne's knuckles kiss cool marble and the crowd _sings_ , exultant. The broad plane of her back flashes in the golden light, and there is a grief in him he cannot manage, cannot touch. Who would love a tongue like his? How? In the great accounting, is he so different from that dog rattling its own leash, content to bite its chain-mate? 

Has he climbed far enough?

The dancing ends and she drifts away, back to the wilds of Halamshiral. 

~ * ~

Time stutters again, white-dart hands hovering just at the edges of his vision. He makes aimless loops, watching. Josephine walks with him, comfort offered in the sparkling conversations she threads with ease; she keeps a hand on his forearm, and the world stays narrow enough for him to manage.

Time picks up again as the crowd gathers: the Empress will be addressing the revellers soon, and the Inquisitor returns from the wilds in a cloud of strange perfume, with blood on the cuff of one sleeve; her face drawn, narrow-eyed and cold, cold, cold. 

La Lionne de Valmont moves to the fore, her hands a study in regal repose.

“There's no time!” Cullen snaps. “We need to act now, Inquisitor.”

“Commander, keep your men back. I want no more blood.”

“Blood?” He reaches out to touch her sleeve, hands rusty with idleness. “What is this? Where?” 

“The Duchess is our target. I do not know if she's acting alone.”

“The Duchess? Then we must move quickly,” he says, her wet cuff held tight in his grip. “You don't have time to _converse_ , and you need my men.”

“No,” she replies, shaking free of his moorings. “I am more than capable. Keep your men in the crowd. No one dies tonight, not for these fools.” No more blood. No more bodies fed into that greedy mouth called Empire. 

“I am not gainsaying that, Mirèio! I am asking that you not fling yourself into danger...”

“Have a little faith, Commander.” It is a cruel platitude, but he's not the first to call her reckless, and he won't be the last.

Cullen reaches for her, her arm moving through his grasp like water as she plucks his fingers out of the air.

She squeezes once – pain crackling along his spine under her grip – and is gone, moving so quickly the _please_ on his lips is dead in his mouth even as his boots clips the heels of hers. 

He wants to tell her, _You need not be alone. You need not your armour with me,_ but he hasn't earned that yet, and so he runs in her shadow through a lush, sighing forest – hunting the lace-winged woman moving to stand beneath Celene's sunlit grace. 

The duchess does not manage a foot beyond the first step: the Bear has a voice, and she knows how to use it. 

Florianne dies quietly, metaphorically: with a wailing hiccough, her brother silent beside her and the crowd now a field of toothy flowers, heads bobbing with the wind. There is no knife in the clinging shadows when they drag Gaspard away, just silver winking in Celene's hand: thin as spider's thread.

Marquise Briala smiles. 

~ * ~

The witch passes him by with a nod. Ten years and two towers gone, and yet her face is much the same: baleful yellow eyes set in a countenance built of indifference. No more than a bare nod to acknowledge that she remembers him only on his knees, pleading.

He finds her out on the balcony, by the raw notes of her magic, bitter and burning on his tongue.

Between the bars of white moonlight, Cullen finds her shoulders curled in, all her proud lines crooked and fractured: a bent shape that disturbs him, leaves him breathless, all his fears echoing like stones thrown down a dry well. He cannot decide what bothers him the most: that she looks so small, or the realization that she is frail as any other, and he has made her something she is not, something far distant from her reality. It's an ugly thread to follow, and he doesn't like where it leads. 

“There you are.” His voice is suddenly and unbearably loud in the silence. “I've been looking for you.” He must remind himself: he wants better. Needs better. More. 

“Have you?” Mirèio murmurs, half a smile on her wan face. Cullen is a flicker at the edge of her vision; the dark garden, emptied of its revellers, is all that soothes the red, greedy anger in her chest. If she looks at him, he'll see all her anger boiling in her veins, black and bitter and vicious. “Perhaps you should find me at a later hour, when I am not so...”

“Mirèio?”

“Give me a moment, please.”

It is the please that ruins him, leaves him standing in the middle of the balcony with all his intentions hanging round like clipped strings. 

The line has been drawn, and he will abide by it. 

Seconds pass as she breathes, struggling to leash herself, her magic, and Cullen cannot help but wonder at the why of her hiding away. If it is for his sake --- No. No she wouldn't be so deferential. She has too much pride for such coddling, and to think otherwise is self-serving arrogance. 

“Forgive me, it's been a difficult night.” Turning, she sees him – all red and gold and summer-faced – and gives the only welcome she can muster: a smile as thin as thread. 

The line scuffed out, Cullen goes to her, slings himself against the balustrade to peer up into her face. She's gone back to being pressed flat, bent at the shoulders and spine, and he desperately wants to ask her why she has bothered to crush her magic so small. “I was worried about you.”

Lively as a dead bird, Mirèio laughs. “Were you? I should be comforted by that. Thank you,” she adds, almost an afterthought. 

Cullen shifts closer, hunting out the smallness in her voice, even as it roots around in the red softness in his chest. “I would like to say that I understand, but I don't think I do.”

Her mouth twitches. “Ah, I don't expect you to, joli.”

“Why not?” Cullen frowns, itching to touch her. That damned fish-hook is back, winking in his throat; worse, he's wary of the blood he'll have to swallow if he tires to pull it out. 

“It's hard to explain.”

He's never asked her before, not for this. “Try. Please.”

She frowns, shocked, the bow of her mouth broken and sharp. “Joli?”

“I have spent the entirety of this wretched evening hearing these Maker-forsaken, ignorant beasts belittle and slander you as if you were nothing more than a...” The words on his tongue cut deep, puting chalk and ruin between his teeth so that he must chew through his fear. “As if you were nothing more than some nameless mage, deserving of the lash.” 

Her jaw clenches, eyes a'blaze and teeth winking white between drawn lips. “Cullen,” she whispers, rage turning his name white, and bloodless. “Cullen you should not.”

“What I heard in the Gallows.” He breathes, water in his lungs. “What I said in the Gallows, was not so different. I will not be alike to them, ever again. I will not. Please, I – I would like to understand. Let me try.”

She stares at him as an artificer would a broken window, at long last having found that missing piece. There would be a smile, were it at all appropriate. “Do you remember what I told you in the woods?”

Cullen nods, holds the knife-point of her gaze between his hands; he will not let go. 

“What you saw tonight is who I am in my mother's court, who I am when I leave the little world my House built for me. I've never been,” she stops, red coals under her tongue, “entirely myself, here in the south.”

His hands are reaching before he has the sense to stop. She does not push him away, but that does not silence the little bleat of grief on his lips. He does not know why this knowledge should hurt, but it does. 

“So it is my own foolishness that is the root of my anger.” She tastes the word on her tongue, bitter as copper, galling. 

“How, how have you been foolish?” Cullen retorts. “You have conducted yourself with the utmost grace, under such blatant disrespect. It galls me to know you had to endure such slander. Your anger is entirely justified. I don't...” He gestures to the air, an echo of the absence he feels in his chest. 

The laughter in her mouth is as fine as lace, but twice as pale. “Forgive me, I was being obtuse, I should be clearer.” His eyes are still on her, and she doesn't know what to make of this resolute will of his. “I've never had to live as myself here, and now I am reminded: I am a mage, before I am anything else. I do not enjoy being reminded.”

“Mirèio.” Her smile is thin, glass-frail and narrow. He has no words for the careful shuttering of her face, and is utterly at a loss as to how to proceed. There are walls and rivers and chasms between them he has never known the like of before. 

“It has been a long night, joli. Let us speak of something else.”

Is it arrogance to ask her to be herself in his company? Is it beyond his right? “Are you quite certain? You – you are upset, and I mislike the thought of that.”

She laughs, not quite as lace-thin as before. “I'm tired of this nonsense. I am tired of these Orlesians, and their flapping mouths. Most especially, I am tired of deciding which manner of tyrant sits their arse on that plush throne. So please, joli, no more of this. Can we speak of something a little less wretched?”

“May we speak of it later?”

“If that is your wish,” she shrugs, some shambling excuse for merriment curling up her lips. 

Stepping away from the balustrade, he turns a quick circle, and picks up his plans from their marble floor. “I understand that you do not want to speak on this further, but there is a great deal we must talk about, and soon.”

“Aye, I know.” It is not that her unhappiness shrinks, but that she sets it aside. Cullen is stood a good distance away from her, something delicate waiting in the fine lines around his eyes. She laughs, delighted. “Still intent on your plans, joli? After all that has happened?”

“As you said: I am tired of these Orlesians and their flapping mouths,” he replies. “I would – Maker, I would have you smile my Lady.” More than anything, he wants the privilege of washing all this ugly, unspoken grief from her however she will permit him to try. “I may never get another chance like this, so I must ask: would you dance with me, my Lady?” 

She sets her unhappiness aside; the smile that stretches across her face stings, even as the absurdly hopeful light in his face reaches in to wring her lungs dry. Covering her delight with her gloved palm, she bows low, sweeps a hand out to dark and rustling leaves, to the crickets that will be their audience and music. “I did not think you could dance.”

“I asked our lady ambassador for lessons, if you must know,” Cullen says, grinning crooked and hot in the cheek. That seems to stop her dead, with a little span of inches between their hands.

“You went to Josephine?” Mirèio wonders, tongue slow and mouth agape. “You went to Josephine, and she taught you to dance. Why?”

“Why not?” Cullen laughs, the hammer chime of _better, I want better, more_ alight in his narrow veins. 

Grinning wide and white, all her charms in the glint of her mouth, Mirèio asks: “Is this your answer, joli?”

“Yes,” comes tumbling out as he grips her hand in his. “Yes it is, Mirèio.” Always her name, sweet and strange on his tongue. Always her hands, her mouth, and the points of her teeth. 

She sighs, “If you would like, you may lead.”

He laughs, he laughs and cannot hear anything beyond the river-rush of her breath over his cheek and the shivering night music, the patter of their feet as they move beneath the sprawling stars: all the world trimmed down to her hand in his, her hand at his waist, and the giddy, eager thrumming in his chest. “No, no I have been waiting since Satinalia. You move me.”

Something small and soft in her bleeds, joy warring with caution, stinging her head to toe. Laying her hand against the curve of his cheek, she spends a moment drowning under tenderness, and says: “Car trop langui longuement, joli.”

His hand presses her leather to his cheek, fingers laced through hers. “As have I, Mirèio. No more waiting.” Her Marcher verse comes to him in burning gasps as she switches the tempo and he is swept away by the beat of the lark's broken wings under the sun's good light. Pierced through, he falls, feet whispering over the mirror-bright floor, eaten up by her. Strong hands sure and steps light, she makes the dark garden spin black and gold as the braids on her shoulders, the murmur of Halamshiral's music enough for her able feet. 

“I do hope you took the time to memorize the route to my chambers,” Mirèio says, tongue honey sweet and hot as a lance. 

“Have you no faith in me, my lady?” he laughs, Satinalia's shivering drum beat loud in his ears as her legs tangle with his and he struggles to keep her pace.

“Joli,” she purrs, and Cullen clings to her as she bends him down, feeling the shiver in his spine crawl up to heat him through and steal his breath. “Bring yourself to me and I'll give you a lesson the likes of which you've never had before. The likes of which you'll never forget.” Her eyes are dark, gaze as pointed as the bright edge of a blade, and her mouth is a crooked, wanting shape against her white teeth. “Decide what it is that you want,” she whispers, breath sweet and hot across his cheek, “and I promise I'll make you _beg_. Make you _howl_.”

Stars wheeling around him, cricket song and his own pulse thrumming in his ears, Cullen bites his tongue, wracked by heat and wanting, and thinks only of yellow silk wrapped 'round his wrists.

~ * ~

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hate me? Love me? I know Celene and Briala are controversial, so please feel free to lob tomatoes in my direction. Their relationship isn't supposed to be nice, and it isn't meant to be. I hope I've managed to get that across.
> 
> Now, as I know you've all been waiting for this, please enjoy Cullen getting fucked senseless in the next chapter. :)


	18. And wild for to hold

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've posted two chapters worth of new matetial for this update, so if you don't want the porn just stick with Chpater 17 and you should be good.
> 
> This is porn. This is nothing but porn. I cannot emphasize this enough. Don't read this at work, or on the bus, or anywhere you don't want to run the risk of other people seeing you reading about Cullen getting pegged within an inch of his life. Don't do it.
> 
> Warnings for this chapter are: femdom, light D/s, kink negotiation, pegging, pain play, riding crops, anal fingering and anal sex.
> 
> I am a terrible person and I have absolutely no shame. Sorry. 
> 
> If any of the above strikes you as something you do not want, please, please to not read this chapter.
> 
> If any of the above is your bag, welcome friends, please let me know if I have provided well for you.

~ * ~

Navigating through Halamshiral is much easier when there are no hands left to pester him, and all the animals are a'bed. His boots are loud, and the satchel in his hand turns his face bloody red, despite the fact that its contents are a mystery to all but himself. 

He finds her door soon enough.

Picking his chin up from his chest, Cullen opens the white door, lungs rattling with the bolts.

The room is dark, the low-burning fire in the grate spilling just enough light to draw his eyes forward, to the tips of her black boots. 

She is waiting for him, one long leg draped over the armrest of a high-backed chair and her riding crop resting neat upon her knee. A king in black and gold, bathed in the red light of the fire, all her angles turned sharp, and her shadows deep. 

“Blessed evening to you, meu joli.” She does not miss the velvet bag clutched in his hand, or the feast of colours his face has brought her. Her fingers curl up, newly trimmed nails bright as ivory in the dim firelight. “Come here.”

The cant of her legs takes him apart, her crooked mouth pulling him forward despite the weakness in his knees. He feels sun-drunk, guts heated and twisted up under his lungs, sense fled, his heart a shivering thing in his throat. 

“Go on, joli, lock the door,” she says, eyes hawkish, and hunting.

The door click settles him, eases the mad, crackling heat picking its way up his spine. To its bare, white face he says: “Mirèio?”

“Oui joli?”

“Are, are you quite certain you still...”

“Yes.”

“You did not let me finish,” Cullen huffs, turning back to her indolent sprawling. Her riding crop flicks lazily, as if it had a mind of its own, tassel brushing against the joint of her hip, and it turns his mouth drier than sand, heat creeping down to pool between his legs. The room is so quiet he can hear the tap-tap-tap of the stiff leather against her knee. For a moment, he fears the red in his cheek will leak down to his chest, and spoil what dignity he's clinging onto. 

“I do not need to. If you recall, I made my choice some time ago. I'll not be dissuaded, save at your request.” Rising up from her seat, she crooks her fingers again. “Come along, joli. Unless, of course, you would prefer to be seduced as if you were some pretty, high-born lord or lady at the Gran Tourney?”

“Maker's Breath,” he mutters, fighting with the urge to bury his face in his hands. She reads his private fantasies too easily, it seems. He would dearly love to see her compete in the Gran Tourney; he would dearly love to see her stalk through a crowd of pretty flowers, intent on plucking the finest, and know her hunting was for him alone. 

“The ones from Ferelden and Orlais, they all have cheeks like roses,” she drawls, a sly, thin grin on her lips. “Each and every one: pretty parchment to write all over. And when you hunt between their legs, find the heat of them with your mouth, they cry like birds.” She makes a noise like a dove, pitched high in her throat, fingers tangled in the collar of her jacket as she laughs. 

Cullen chokes out, “Mirèio!” And then the war is lost and he is laughing with her, graceless and dizzy with the thought. “I'd give a great heap of coin to see you thus. Truly.” 

Crossing the room in ten slow strides, bag held tight in his hands, Cullen stops before the little circle of light, the tips of his boots touching hers. When she stands, they are nearly sewn together, her breath rushing hot over his cheek and the sting of oranges and bitter herbs under his nose. 

Without a word she fits her palms under his elbows until he's curved up and she's bent down, teeth and tongue pressing into the soft, thin skin just below his ear. His breath turns harsh, thin, and he groans, the riding crop's leather strap digging into his skin.

“So,” Mirèio chuckles, pulling up until Cullen is forced onto the balls of his feet, “not only do you want me to mark you before I fuck you, but you wouldn't at all mind watching me do the same to another? How curious.” 

“Damn you, woman,” he huffs, unwilling to break her hold to set the bag aside. “I said nothing of the sort.” It's a pretty lie of course; he would. 

“Are you quite certain, joli?”

“Have you...”

“I believe I told you: my tastes are wide, and varied. I have indulged in a great many things.” Her lips linger on the word _many_ and Cullen shivers beneath her focus. As before, she wants to follow the trail of his colours, dip her tongue into all that red until she can find it on every inch of his body. This is Cullen at his best – honey faced and bared for her tongue, her teeth. Such a delight.

Cullen manages a thin, reedy croak of laughter: her mouth is back, sucking just hard enough at the same spot to leave a red, stinging mark below his ear. 

Pulling away, she lingers at the corner of his mouth, the scrape of his stubble prickling against her skin. That he holds himself perfectly still, breath a ruin and cheeks wine-dark, sets a greedy spark between her legs. “Now, joli, tell me what it is you would have of me tonight.” 

“I – I wish. No, I want.” Cullen swallows, sharing her air. “I want you to use that crop in your hand. I...”

“Steady on,” she murmurs, fingers dragging loud over his jacket until they are snarled in the silk at his waist. 

He tilts his head, leaning into her mouth; gently, gently her tongue brushes over his lower lip, asking, seeking. Cullen pushes nearer, lost to the silk and seeking the sharp prick of her teeth with his own tongue. She chuckles and the noise hits the back of his throat, turning the warmth in his belly into a curdling heat wicked enough to drip down to his toes. 

“I want you to fuck me. I would like for you to decide the rest.” 

Grinning, she returns for another kiss, stretching his jaw wide, tongue curling around all the little noises caught behind his teeth. 

“As you wish,” she chuckles, nipping at the line of of his jaw. “Take your boots off, and go stand behind the chair. I will deal with the rest.”

“The rest?” Cullen mouthes, a pin-scratch line between his brows. 

“The bag, and your clothes, of course,” she amends, plucking the velvet from his grasp. 

Falling into the chair, Cullen tugs at the cuff of his boot; the room is filled by the jingling beat of her steps and the faint whisk of her riding crop against her thigh, and his fingers slip, made clumsy in his eagerness. Perhaps those Marcher poets are right: what finer wine is there than desire? What better music than the shiver of another's breath over a neck? 

Boots gone, Cullen pulls himself out of the chair and positions himself behind it, hands curled over its wooden crown. Her eyes are dark hooks in the firelight, and for a moment it seems she is content to leave him hanging on the crook of her grin. 

She sets the riding crop tap-tap-tapping against her thigh and Cullen must bite his tongue, heat licking along his neck, down his spine. The air turns sharp, drawing in close to his skin as he searches for calm, for a centre that isn't stung by anticipation. “Mirèio?”

“I do hope your experience extends to the use of toys,” she replies, stepping away to retrieve the bag he'd brought with him all the way from Skyhold. “I still cannot believe you brought this...” The breath dies in her throat, a strangled noise leaking out from her slack mouth. “You did not,” she breathes, eyes flicking up to find him, mouth slick and red, wearing nothing but teethmarks and a frown. “Of all the ones to choose! You, you chose this one?” 

Panic bubbles up and Cullen reaches out. “Is, is there something wrong, Mirèio.”

“No, no not at all.” And then she is laughing, bent double and sucking in great lungfuls of air. “Merciful Andraste, Cullen. You truly do have excellent taste in cocks.”

“I beg your pardon?” Cullen sputters, to his dismay, the heat of embarrassment colouring his cheeks back into their wine-dark flush.

“Joli, you managed, all on your own, to choose the only one in my collection that I had personally crafted for my body. Maker's holy throne, you chose the one with _runes_. The most expensive, the most well-crafted. My _favourite_. All on your own.” 

“Runes?” Cullen retorts, hiding an undignified cough in his fist, brows pinched together in confusion. “What does it do?”

“Other than fuck you senseless?” Mirèio replies, grin turning rakish, and silver-bell bright. The toy warms to her touch, runes humming faintly under her hand. 

“Void take you, woman,” Cullen curses, fighting with the ridiculous laughter in his chest, but the rest of his words are eaten up by the pressed of her lips, and slick of her tongue over his teeth. She pulls away, and he seeks out her gaze: narrow, sharp and high as a hunting hawk.

“It lets me feel,” Mirèio purrs.

Cullen groans at that, understanding at once what she means. Her tongue flicks against his lips, lazy and slow as cold honey, and he hisses around the nip of her teeth, guts tight with desire and cock heavy between his legs.

“It lets me fell every inch of you, as if this were a part of my own body. I'll feel you around me, slick and soft and hot. I'll feel you bend. Feel you shiver. Feel you tight around my cock.”

That is enough. More than enough. “Please,” cuts up out of his lungs, a ragged moan dragged over red coals. “I can't abide...” 

“Patience,” she soothes, circling around, once more the shadow in a dark wood. The sight of him makes her ache, makes her breath red in her throat. Reaching out, she runs a hand along his arm, fingers whispering across the trembling lines of his shoulders, and Cullen groans, bites his tongue.

Unthinking, he turns to her.

“Eyes forward, joli,” she gentles, taking his chin in hand to push his gaze back to the door. “It will be more enjoyable, I promise.” That earns her a thin, thin whimper. “What is your word?” 

“As before: canticle,” Cullen replies, fingers digging into the chair. Something hot and shivery thrills along his spine, pooling into his guts as his toes dig into the plush rug. 

“Of course, joli. I trust you to take only what I give you, and no more than what you want.” 

Mirèio swings the crop, letting it swish through the air with a hiss, and Cullen jerks as if a blow had been struck, a strangled gasp peeling his lips apart. He is hard already, and dizzy with need, cock straining against the unforgiving fabric of his breeches. It is not just the pain, but the focus. It is knowing that every ounce of her control, her iron, her fire, is turned on himself alone.

Maker, but he wants. 

“Remember,” Mirèio says, drawing him out of his haze, “I will not draw blood. I will not scar. Not even if you ask. This is meant to add pleasure, not distract from it. If you move your hands from that chair I will stop, and we will not continue.”

Cullen nods, even as the crop knocks against his thigh and her hands come round to pull at the silk, her silk, wrapped around his waist.

“Use your mouth, Cullen,” she chides, fingers quick against the knots. “Talk to me, joli.”

“Yes, I understand,” he croaks. Sweat begins to gather at his temples, blood pounding in his ears as she divests him of his jacket and undershirt. She's still wearing her gloves, and they are cold enough on the skin of his abdomen to pluck a thin noise from him. As quickly as she removes his jacket, she hooks her thumbs into the band of his breeches and a new chill runs alongside his anticipation. 

Bare, Cullen feels cold leather slide up his back, lingering over the curve of his spine, and the narrow valley between his shoulders. “Gloves,” he grits out. “Take them off.” It's not that he dislikes the slick chill, but he wants to feel _her_ , and the shiver beneath her skin. 

“As you desire,” is her reply, laying herself along Cullen's body to bring her fingers to his mouth. “A little help, joli?” she laughs, dipping one finger into the wet heat at the edge of his mouth. 

Cullen groans, bites down, and the glove comes away with a hiss. The sound sets him alight, grabs hold of his breath and squeezes until she brings him her other hand, and the little hitch in her chest is his to linger in, rapt. 

Fingers naked, the viper-green light of the anchor turning Cullen's flushed face into an odd feast of lines, she murmurs, “Better?” 

“Yes,” he breathes. Her hands return, dry and warm, brushing over the small of his back to dip down between his thighs, working the skin to a flushed, tingling red. 

“Do you want to be bound?” she asks, kneading, easing his legs open with each stroke. 

“No, not yet.” There is that sun-drunk languor again, that wine-dark heat curling in his belly, leaving him strung across the edge of pleading, though they have not begun at all. 

“How many?” Mirèio rasps, bending the crop in her hands. The shiver it makes on release paints fresh gooseflesh across the splendour of Cullen's naked back, and she is seized by the magnificent sight he presents to her. That he should trust her at all is rather remarkable. 

“As many as you see...” A rough, open-handed swat to his backside tears a yelp from him, and Cullen arches, hissing. 

“Too eager by far, joli. I do not know your history well enough for such liberties to be taken.” She huffs, the bow of her lip caught between her sharper teeth. Maker, but that's far too much. Has he no caution? No care? “Five.”

“Ten,” is his reply, stretched thin over his tongue.

“Seven,” she growls, dipping down to lay her teeth along the trembling line of his pulse. “There will be other nights.”

“Seven,” Cullen agrees, wetting his lips, tongue dumb with lust. It is that surety, buried in the roughly strung lash of her voice, that leaves him breathless and arching into her touch, even as her hand wraps around the back of his neck. Her mouth presses in time with her hand, points of slick heat spreading as she wanders between his shoulders. Her nails drag down his neck with no intent to draw lines, and Cullen breathes through the bite she leaves on the base of his spine. 

“Ready, joli,” Mirèio murmurs, tapping the crop against the back of Cullen's thighs, letting him feel the weight, the strength. 

“Go on, please.” Muscles locked in anticipation, he hears her take a step back. And then nothing. Only silence, and the dizzying thrum of his blood, the creak of the chair beneath his hands. Seconds pass, agonizing seconds wherein he waits, strung between the burn at the base of his spine and his needle-sharp ache for more.

The stiff line of his shoulders eases – and that is when it comes. Expertly landed, the pain stings across the middle of his backside, and Cullen swallows his cry, back bowed and heat singing through his veins. His cock twitches, rubbing against the chair's soft fabric.

The second blow comes before he can gather himself, followed swiftly by a third. He can't choke back the noise this time: a low, grating moan that digs its way out from behind his teeth. She is not landing the strikes atop one another. She has done this before. Her hand is sure, strength perfectly gauged to sting, to shock. Expert and aware of just where to lay a mark.

Breathing through his nose, he waits, hearing the rattle of her own enjoyment just over his shoulder. It is good to know she is not at odds with his desires. Good to know she hangs on his noises as he hangs on her touch. 

Mirèio lands the next blow across the backs of his thighs and this time Cullen yelps, high-pitched enough to edge into a wail. He's achingly hard, the fresh marks feverish, beating in time with his pulse. The fifth comes squarely on the crease where his thighs met his arse, and the sensation climbs high, crushing the breath from his lungs. He wheezes, sucks at his own tongue, mouth watering.

“Still think ten is a good idea, joli?” Mirèio says, voice honey-soft, stripped through with fire. 

Cullen laughs, even as she lands her sixth blow, in the same spot. A wavering moan tears out of his mouth, and Cullen rocks forward, cock pressing against the chair, half blind and driving for any sort of friction, no matter how maddening. “Void below,” he groans, dropping his head to his forearm, sweat stinging his eyes.

“Ah, such colours you wear joli.” Somewhere in her there is a need shaped like talons. “You'll wear these for _days_ ,” she grits out, and the talons click, closing round the boiling in her veins. “And every time you wince, know that I'll be watching.”

“Maker,” tears from his throat in a rush, like the thrumming of fine, white wings. Between the racing blood and the fever-burn of the marks, a feeling like drunkenness washes over him, limbs loose but heavy enough to make it feel as if he could sink to the floor and be content to never move again. 

“Remember that when you sit down to morning meal, joli,” she laughs.

Flicking sweat from his forehead, Cullen jolts when it is her hand against his his arse rather than the crop. She squeezes, and Cullen hisses, the fever-bright feeling rolling through him like waves. 

“Two more,” she says, stepping away, her chuckling sifting down into the pit of her chest.

Cullen makes a noise of complaint when her hand leaves his skin, but the swish of the crop through the air steals his tongue. He tenses, shoulders and thighs trembling, knuckles white and fingers clawed, _now, now, now,_ singing through his blood. 

The crop cuts the air, but fails to make contact with his skin and Cullen chokes on a curling moan: wet, red-edged and obscene. He loosens, and she lands the last blows across two other marks – a line of bruising fire – and Cullen arches, the shock of it spilling her name: a wrecked and ragged cry of, “Mirèio!” 

The blows end, and Cullen tries to still his panting, fingers clutching at the high back of the chair and the friction of his cock against the fabric pulling him through, narrow, dizzy bursts of pleasure-pain. “Maker, Mirèio, please.”

“Sí, joli?” She's made him a wealth of red lines: a trembling, pleading mess. The firelight glints off the sheen of his skin, the bend of his neck a vulnerable curl she wants to hold in her mouth. The vicious ache between her legs is nearly agonizing. “Tell me what you want.”

Something none too distant from euphoria flares through him, tied round the ache in his cock and the sting of the marks across his arse and thighs. Mirèio's mouth closes down over his trembling shoulder, sucking a mark into the salt-slick skin and he pleads with her, babbles nonsense. She moves, fingers whispering over the welts she gifted him, and the red ache pulls his plea into a string of senseless noise from his open mouth. 

She is writing her possession over his body, and Cullen cannot have enough of it.

“I want you to fuck me,” he says, tongue heavy with need, lips bit and burning red. 

“Bon dieu, joli,” she groans, crop swinging on her wrist, “look at you. So eager. I could not have imagined...”

“Mirèio.” Cullen gasps, head buzzing, mind stung to a frenzy. “Please.” Her touch is firm, tender – warm hands that draw him up from his hunch over the chair and back towards the cavernous bed. He moves with her, pliant and breathless, wandering in the fractured space between awareness and utter darkness.

It is only then that he remembers she is still fully clothed.

Turning in the loose heat of her grip, Cullen asks, “May I?” In the carriage, she had refused, kept her vest and wriggled away from the question he hadn't dared ask her. And now he's got his fingers picking at her buttons, waiting for her to refuse. Again.

“Joli?” Some of that old, well-worn anxiety flares up and she frowns, capturing his wrists. There are always questions, and afterwards, everything is strange and hesitant. That is the worst of it: being changed in the eyes of another again, and again, over and over, by a wound so old she sometimes forgets to tend to it.

“I'd very much like to undress you, Mirèio,” Cullen manages, bullying the words out under the haze of her marks and the awkward half-breath of fear skittering around under his skin. “If that is something you would allow me. I would have whatever you will give me, as you are. As you will share.” 

And suddenly it is as if she has been torn up by the roots, all her rain and dirt still clinging round. “Are you quite sure, Cullen?”

The breath dies in his throat and Cullen stills. He remembers: the scar. There are questions replete in the hooks of her gaze, and Cullen lifts his chin, hands steady on her chest. “By your leave, and only by your leave, Mirèio.”

She nods, slow and stiff, arms loose at her sides.

Cullen steadies himself, shuffling his attention between the practiced distance in her eyes and the buttons under his fingers. He moves as quickly as he can, reaching up to push the jacket off her fine, broad shoulders. That she is utterly naked under the jacket should not surprise him, but seeing so much of her, so suddenly, cuts his thoughts to a halt. This is the first time he has seen her bare, all of her, and he is not unaware of the gift she is giving over. The fact that she would allow him this much? He scarcely knows what words to give her, other than the press of his lips to the hard line of her jaw. 

He will not seek it out, he will find it in due time. 

Cupping her small, high breasts, he flicks his thumbs over her nipples until they are stiff and her breath is twisted up high. She huffs a laugh and he presses kisses along the ridge of her collarbone, down between her breasts, seeking the softness she rarely displays. 

He finds it quick enough: a long, thin valley of a scar running from the topmost of her ribs, down passed the sharp point of her hip. The wound is so deep it healed the colour of raw, uncooked liver. The sheer, ugly ruin of it takes Cullen's breath and he looks up, only to find her still, and stone-faced.

“This should have killed you,” he croaks, ruined by the memory of her words in the greenhouse. A Templar truly had pinned her down and cut her open. Straight down to the white of her bones. Some stranger in the woods had looked into her handsome face and seen only a monster, deserving of the sword. 

Mirèio shrugs, even as Cullen's fingers map the wreckage on her torso.

Cullen tastes the bitter salt of blood in his mouth, torn open by a grief he will never understand, never mind touch. Something of his distress must leak onto his face, because she bends down, draws their foreheads together.

“It's an old wound, Cullen.” She sighs, curving her thumb along his cheek. He leans into he touch and she is lost to the press of her heart against her ribs. “Leave it be. There are better things to dwell on.”

“I – I cannot imagine. Why? Who?” It is so easy to imagine, so easy he cannot bear it: the sounds, the weight of the sword, the ease with which the skin would have parted. Only cruelty moved that hand, and he is so fucking tired of cruelty, and the ruin it has wrought.

“You know why, and the who is dead. Long dead. No templar has ever again laid their hands on me in violence, and lived to do it to another. Leave it be joli, I'll not tell you again.”

“Mirèio.”

“No,” she barks, hard as steel and twice as unforgiving. “No more. This.” She spares herself a breath – this is not quite as far from a confession as she would prefer. “You and I matter more. Leave it be.” 

Cullen nods, curving his hands over the joints of her hips, and prays to the Maker Himself that she will find comfort in him, wherever and however she can. He asks, “Do you wish to stop?”

“Joli, if memory serves me, I promised to fuck you until you could not remember any other hands but mine. Until you begged for release,” Mirèio answers, willing the slick-sweet smoke of desire back into her voice. She waits, hanging on the uptick of his breath, the widening of his pupils, the flush of his milk and honey face.

“Yes,” he rasps, “I haven't forgotten.” Unbidden, he offers his wrists, and curve of his bare neck, bowed; his eager mouth. Her fingers close round and he anchors himself to the bite of her iron between the thin bones of his wrists.

“I keep my promises, joli,” Mirèio says with a sly, too-red twitch of her lips. “And I will meet them in full. I will make you a wreck of desire, of wanting. I will have that mouth of yours truly learn to speak your needs. And you will scream them for me, joli, I promise,” she hisses, reaching both hands down to grip his backside, pressing hard against the red welts.

Cullen chokes on the noise in his throat, head snapping back and his body bowed under her hands. Every inch of him sings, exultant: awash in sparking nerves, consumed by the slick slide of her fingers over the evidence of her on his skin.

“Do you prefer...” 

Cullen doesn't let her finish, but instead lays his face into the sweep of her neck to write his desires across her too-sharp collarbones. “No. You decide. I asked you to fuck fuck me senseless. So do it, and ask me no more questions. Please,” he adds, tasting salt on his tongue.

Mirèio laughs, stunned by the force of Cullen's impatience, his need, and all the little, bitten red noises her hands are wringing from him. “Just one more question, then, joli. For safety's sake.”

“Yes?” Cullen grits out, pressing closer to the wild racing of her heartbeat.

“When was the last time you did this? Had someone fuck you open?”

He manages to hold her gaze, chin tipped up. “Years. Not – Maker – not since Kirkwall. Why?” 

Her reply is gentle-tongued. “I told you, no blood. It has been some time for you, and I will adjust accordingly.”

“And it hasn't been for you?” He asks, even as she pushes him to the bed, laying him out flat atop the lush silk coverlet. She crawls over him, on hands and knees, and he opens to her, shameless and eager. 

“It certainly hasn't been years.” Something odd flickers across his face, but she's had about enough digging for the night. “I'm only a little disappointed I'll have to return to regularly trimming my nails.”

The thought of this – her weight over him, her marks on his thighs and ass – becoming a regular occurrence lights bushfire in Cullen's mind. Heat spills into his bones, something like lightning crackling under his skin. “I'll hold you to that, Mirèio.”

“Good,” Mirèio bites out, watching the long column of his throat. She wants to mark, leave herself on his skin for all the world to see. _Soon,_ she promises herself, moving away to find her exquisite cock, and the oil, and some sort of sense in the fevered clamour of her thoughts.

Cullen bites down on a noise of protest at her leaving, the sting of the marks on his skin returning to the fore of his mind. Every shift drags the fabric over the welts, sending needle-sharp pain up his spine. As if through a fog, he hears rustling, and the clink of a little bottle. The soft, wet pop of a cork draws a little, wet gasp from between his lips, as if her fingers had reached in to pluck out the noise herself. 

The bed dips, and Cullen's eyes pop open as Mirèio sets the little bottle of oil by his hip, glass cold enough to make him shiver. Her fingers are wet, bright with oil, and the noise of it on her skin turns the breath in his throat into thick, useless pleading. He is hard enough to ache, hips jerking up at the first hint of her breath over the head of his cock. 

“Open for me, joli,” she sighs, voice strung low and gentle. Cullen spreads his thighs apart, thick lines making her mouth water. “What a sight you are, Cullen. Such a beautiful surrender, I haven't words.” Mirèio rubs the tips of her fingers together, and traces a line from the trembling softness of Cullen's inner thigh to the base of his cock, watching gooseflesh spread and colour bloom. 

Cullen would try words, but they are lost to the line her finger is drawing down his thigh. The tips of her fingers brush against the base of his cock and he must his tongue to keep quiet. The whole of his world is the smell of her, her perfume, the dark hoods of her eyelids; her fingers. 

“Have you surrendered like this before, laid yourself out on a bed and _begged_ for release?” 

Her fingers curve up, wrapping around the base of his cock, and Cullen jolts, groaning, “No. Not like this.” She sets the pace, keeping her strokes slow and measured as if there is all the time in the world, and she is only interested in how like a instrument he can be. And Cullen bends as if she is plucking strings, arching into the languorous flick of her wrist. 

“Ready, meu gran cavaller?”

Cullen has sense enough to nod. Seeking out her gaze in the encroaching dark, he finds a wry grin on the proud lines of her face. “Yes,” he amends. “Yes.”

She presses in slowly, slowly, breaching the tight ring of muscles, and Cullen fights the urge to squirm. The first intrusion is never truly pleasant. Her finger curls, and the stiff wire beneath his shoulders eases. He hears, “Breathe, Cullen.” But that much coherent thought is hard to grasp. 

The seconds tick by as she strokes, shallow and meant only to loosen. A wet hum of frustration lodges in his throat and Cullen swallows it down, canting his hips to give her room, to encourage her. “I am not fragile,” he reminds her, reproaching.

“I never said you were,” Mirèio replies, withdrawing just enough to add a second finger. Spreading her fingers just so, she presses her thumb along the smooth patch of skin just behind Cullen's balls. “Sweet Andraste, joli. Be patient.”

A strangled gasp crawls out of his chest and Cullen's knees jerk, legs falling open wider. This time she leans in, twisting her wrist, pushing until her fingers brush against the smooth knot of flesh. Bright, heavy heat unfurls along his spine, reaching out to burn the tips of his fingers and the roil of his guts. Some garbled exclamation leaves him and the slick heat spreads with the curling of her fingers. 

She crooks her fingers farther apart and Cullen whines, hitching his knees higher.

“Where's that tongue of yours, joli?” She has not truly had an opportunity to watch him in his pleasure, and as he is now – sweat blooming on his skin alongside the red, eyes fallen to slits of narrow gold, mouth open in a soundless gasp – she can scarcely recall anyone more lovely. “Talk to me. Tell me how well you like this: my fingers in you.”

Had he room, or breath, he would laugh. “Talk,” he manages. “Talk? Void take you, Mirèio. More. For the love of the Maker, _more_.”

“Ah, there is the demanding, the need,” she sighs, content. Leaning down, she brings her weight to bear, shoulders dipping between Cullen's trembling thighs until she's brought her fingers flush to the bundle of nerves. She crooks her two fingers a little wider, never withdrawing, only pushing in a steady, rolling rhythm. _Loose,_ she tells herself, _just loose. No release. Not yet._

Cullen makes a noise like man dying. The sparks in his gut and along his spine turn to flames, to burning. He's alight, nerves tight and hot and waiting on some slick edge she's driving him towards. There's no keeping hold of his breathing. Cullen bites at his tongue, his lips, saliva pooling in his mouth, a hundred profanities he can't string together locked behind his teeth. He wheezes, scrabbling for Mirèio's shoulders, and all the air left to him drives out of his chest as more of her weight falls on him. Frowning, her hand pushes him down even as she presses in again, knocking him flat to the pallet and the silk. 

“Mirèio,” he huffs, whines. She acts as if deaf, and her pace doesn't change: slow and steady, and maddening. Her long fingers push in, and he rides the jolt, desperate for something, for anything other than steady and slow. 

“Yes?” 

Somewhere along the way, the air has turned hot enough to scorch his throat: all this heat making his tongue thick and useless in his mouth. Her fingers slide out, only the tips pressing just at the ring of his muscles and Cullen pushes back, all jerking hips and stuttering lungs. “Will you just. Maker, please.”

A mangled chuckle, then, “Patience, Cullen. You can endure. I like this.”

“Do you?” Cullen stutters, waiting for the breach of her fingers. 

“Of course,” she hums, studying. Fingers spread, she pushes in again, watching the sensation ripple through Cullen's body, the twitch of his cock, the spasm of his abdomen, the stutter of his breath. “Like this, I see all of you. Every little twitch. Every moment of pleasure.” Curling up, she finds the smooth knot in him, bringing her thumb back to his perineum. Cullen moans, loud and naked enough to shade into a sob. She keeps her thumb there, rubbing. Cullen squirms, lip bit between his teeth. 

“Like this,” Mirèio says, grinning, leaning down, pushing in further, “I find such delightful things.” The head of Cullen's cock is flushed an angry purple, little drops of pre-cum bright in the firelight. She flicks her tongue out, and Cullen arches, babbling, pleading. “Look at you. So ready. Tell me, joli. Tell me you are ready.” 

Cullen feels the hot skim of her breath, the wet swipe of her lips. Heat within heat, just out of his reach. Every inch of him is rooted to the weight of his cock, to the sting of her marks, to the fullness her fingers bring. None of it is enough. None of it is all that he wants. 

“I am ready,” he promises, and even to his own ears he sounds a pretty ruin. “I am, I swear it.”

“One more, I think,” Mirèio hums, adding a third finger. Bending down to catch Cullen's open mouth, she pushes in to her second knuckle, poised to dig his strangled wail out with her teeth. He bends beneath her, all pleading sounds and hot, slick skin. The steady, obscenely wet noise of her fingers in his body enough to make her hunger vicious, and her cunt ache. 

Her fingers slide, rubbing at his slick inner muscles, and Cullen can't. Not any more. No more. There's enough oil to drip down the cleft of his ass, little drops running along to the small of his back, and that's more than enough. Alongside a stitch in his lungs and a knotted mess of pleasure-pain he can't breathe out, that is enough.

“Enough,” he wails. “Mercy, my Lady, mercy.”

Her fingers still and she looks at him, at the flush staining his chest and the trembling in his abdomen. “Look at me, Cullen,” she commands. 

Cullen looks to her face, to the high, taloned cut of her eyes and the red wound of her mouth. She has the toy in her hand, and only now does he realize that the oddly silken wood matches the colour of her skin. It is made for her, for her body, her shape. He watches, rapt, as she spreads herself with her free hand.

He itches to touch, feeling every scant inch between his body and hers. She's wet enough that he can practically taste her on the air, the curls between her legs dark and damp, and the skin of her thighs wet.

He watches her press the fitted bulb in, grinding down until it moulds to her, seamless and perfectly tight. He watches her whole body shiver, eyes rolling white and eyelids fluttering, and knows that is for him, at his request. Cullen's breath climbs, soars, even as she continues her maddening effort to stroke him open. 

Here, now, she is as naked as he: all her desire, her pleasure, worn for his sake. And all it would take is a single word from his lips to end this. Now he understands: trust is everything. The very heights, the crown. 

A rough _please_ , leaves him sounding a shade too desperate. Sweat dripping into his eyes and down the nape of his neck, all he wants is the sprawl of her shoulders above him. To finally feel her sewn against his skin – delicate flesh within delicate flesh. 

“Get on with it, Mirèio I beg of you.”

She needs no further encouragement. Withdrawing her fingers in an obscene slide, she slicks her palm with oil enough to drip down her wrist and onto Cullen's hip, and coats herself until the toy is pressing against her clit with each stroke. Until it is shining. The sound makes Cullen shudder, breath coming in short, sharp gasps. 

“Hands and knees? Or facing?” 

Cullen blinks.

Laughing, Mirèio bends down, and the graze of her odd, runed cock against his makes Cullen gasp. It's hot and firm and slick. So wonderfully real. Her teeth nip along his jaw, bite at his chin, and he hums into her mouth, against her tongue, question momentarily forgotten. 

“Do you want to be on your knees, Cullen? Or do you want to face me while I fuck you within an inch of your life?” Cullen groans into her kiss, her words landing somewhere in the back of his throat. 

Cullen knows she wants an answer, wants specifics. But words are beyond him. She grinds down, wraps a hand around his cock, and hers, and strokes. Purposefully, she keeps her grip loose enough to drive all sense from his brain, and Cullen curses, hips jerking, beads of come mixing with the oil decorating his skin. 

“Come on, sweet thing,” she croons, skimming her lips along the bob of Cullen's throat, her teeth biting at the hollow. She hums open-mouthed against his skin, and he chokes, sucking in a breath. Bringing her knee up, she pushes until she's flush against his balls, until he's rutting against her, into the loose grip of her hand.

“Facing,” comes tumbling out, and the burning in his cheeks is her rough palm knotted up with some breed of embarrassment. Is it too much to ask to see her face?

“Good,” she soothes, sucking at the hammer beat of Cullen's pulse even as he groans, pushing his cock into her fist. She feels him, the heat of him, along her own, the runes carrying the slide right to the ache between her legs.

“Breathe,” she reminds him, and lines up the head of her cock with the oil-slick ring of his muscles. His years without make her mindful as she slowly, slowly pushes in. He's so tight, the clinging, hot grip of him around her takes her to pieces. Leaves her adrift in fragile sensations that burn between the apex of her thighs.

He spills her name, rocking down to meet her. The breach of her cock cuts up into his chest, pushing out the air in his lungs, the sensation of being filled dragging all his thoughts down into that singular sensation. Heels digging in, slipping over the silk coverlet, Cullen pushes back, gripping at her hips, neck bared and tongue loose with the gravel-bite of his answering moan.

“Joli!” is a strangled cry in her throat as she pushes in again, lost to the wet, slick slide, and the throbbing sting of her own clit. Cullen's chest heaves, a wracked, wrecked noise edging into a sob and she stills, hunting for signs of discomfort. But she finds he wears only the burn of pleasure. The air is rife with salt; the sweet scent of oil and the acrid snapping of her own magic; oakmoss and elderflower on Cullen's skin. She rolls her hips in a steady motion and Cullen makes to grab for her hips again. Chuckling, she bats his hands away and pushes up, keeping the head of her cock flush to the knot within him. 

Cullen curses, pushes back, feeling torn open – ragged and wanting and strung along the thin, knife's edge of true release. Her strokes hit right, but they are slow and shallow, lingering. He wants her to move. Needs more than a gentle hand. 

He needs to know if she can feel. 

“Mirèio,” Cullen grits out, the sensation of being filled echoing in his chest, pushing down on his ribs and squeezing his lungs. “Can you feel?

“Cullen,” she moans, fire on her tongue and aching to put her teeth against the bob of his throat. “Merciful Andraste, you're...”

“Then move faster!” he barks, something like mad laughter bubbling up in his throat. “Maker take you, move. I need you to move.” 

“As you wish.” Mirèio chuckles, tongue pleasure-drunk and thick in her mouth. Grabbing for the bend of Cullen's knee, she pushes his leg up to his chest, and lets him take her weight in one smooth thrust. 

The laughter dies in Cullen's throat, his face going slack. 

“Holy,” Cullen stutters, jaw working and teeth snapping together. “Holy Maker, Mirèio.” She gives him no quarter, no time, grabs his arse, her stripes singing pain, and hauls him onto her thighs, driving into him with hard, relentless strokes. “Fuck!” 

Mirèio's breath comes in hard-edged lashes, sweat dripping into her eyes. Each time Cullen tightens around her, it sears through her, cuts her to the bone and spills white fire into the bowl of her pelvis. “You asked,” she grunts. “You asked and I will give you what you ask for, joli.”

He has nothing to give her but wailing, red-dipped cries. Nothing in his head but the fire of her words. Nothing in his throat but the needle-point of his breath tangled there with the noises he can't keep behind his teeth. She thrusts and he feels its echo right up into his chest, his throat, teeth clacking together as she snaps her hips. She withdraws and he sobs, before she thrusts back in and he _howls_. 

They are sewn together, skin sticking and peeling apart where her hips meet his arse, bodies dripping salt and oil.

“Mirèio,” he sobs, uncaring, riven. “ Mirèio, please.” What, precisely, he is pleading for, Cullen does not know, but he wants more, wants her deeper, anything. The smell of wet earth and fire rises, crowding under his nose and digging into the burning coil at the base of his spine. Her magic, tightly leashed, the echo of it overwhelming and raw, sets a heady wonder rippling through his frame. What would it would be like to have that too? All her power, unleashed and drawn to the surface. But the angle of her thrusts changes, driving the head of her cock harder against the bundle of nerves and the thought leaves him.

“Sing for me, joli,” Mirèio snaps, the white of her teeth gleaming in the dark, leaning down to kiss the hammer beat of Cullen's pulse in his neck. “Move with me.”

Cullen shifts, a waiting ruin in the strings of his voice, and he moves with her, with the power in her strokes. Her hand finds his, and she laces their fingers together. Something sweet and frail and frightening creeps into his chest, and Cullen lingers in it, water filming over his eyes and tightening his throat. 

“Trop desir a veoir te.” Mirèio breathes against Cullen's neck, brought to the height, fingers clinging to the edge of her release. “Meu joli, ce que je tant desir.”

“Mirèio!” He tastes her name like honey and wine – some thick, heady drink that settles into his bones. “I – I.” The words sting him, a red gore in his side. They eat at him, trembling on his tongue. _Love,_ he thinks. _My love, please_. Too much. Too soon. 

“Come for me, joli. Let go.” She snaps her hips, gripping his hand in hers, and bites at the hollow of his throat, teeth scraping, breath rushing, burning. The bob of his throat is exquisite beneath her mouth and she sucks, bites, moving to his collarbones: a new necklace to wear with the rising sun. 

Cullen comes with a ragged, ruined cry, tightening hard around her, seed splashing hot across his belly. She tumbles after him, voice twisted high and breath shuddering out of her aching lungs, vision trembling, washing in and out with the stumbling of her breath. She sags, barely propped up by her elbows, sucking in air as if fighting through a mile of dark water.

Unthinking, Cullen pulls her down and the weight of her knocks out what little breath is left in him. The head of her cock pushes in hard, pain screaming along his spine, but he doesn't care. He just wants her weight. Her scent. Her shoulders. 

The moments tick by in silence, their only company: breathing, and a crackling fire.

“Merciful Andraste, Mirèio,” Cullen groans, fighting for air, for sense, squirming against the press of her cock still inside. “I think you did just fuck me senseless.” Above him, hand still tangled in his and her lips at his throat, Mirèio's strained chuckle shivers through her chest, through his own. 

It takes her more than a few moments to reply.

“I keep telling you,” she heaves, breathless as a bird struck through, “I always keep my promises, meu gran cavaller. Did I – did I bruise anything you did not want me to bruise?” Her question earns her his laughter, warm as rain. 

“No,” Cullen has sense enough to snort, drawing his fingers beneath her chin, thumb stroking over her red mouth. “You have done nothing but give me all that I asked for.” And his words are a whisper fine grin against her skin. “I have – Maker, Mirèio – I have no words.”

She laughs into the hollow of his throat, squeezed tight by things she will give neither voice nor name to. “Keep breathing,” she murmurs in reply, reaching down to pull the toy out from between Cullen's legs. 

The burn is exquisite even with the sharp feeling of being made suddenly empty rattling around in his chest. It helps that she is atop him, hotter than any blanket, and gentler than any lover he's had before, despite the vicious pace he'd begged her for.

“Thank you,” he whispers, bringing a hand up to brush his thumb along the small of her back until she settles fully atop him, a long, long breath rattling out of her chest. 

“No thanks, joli. This is, this is no service. I would have you understand that.” What she leaves silent is something he must feel, because the hand at her back curls up as if to weight her to him, as if to draw her in as before, when they were bound, delicate flesh to delicate flesh. 

Cullen nods, feeling bare and plucked-raw. “I understand.”

“Then sleep. We will both still be here in the morning.” Mirèio shifts, laying herself out along Cullen's back, one arm looping under his, as before, on that first night he shared her bed. With the last bit of sense left in her head, she makes a half-hearted attempt to drag them both out of the spreading wet spot on the bed.

“Yes,” he breathes, drowning in a vast, roiling ocean made of wonder and terror and joy. “I know.” Cullen laces his fingers through hers, pinning her hand to his chest, and does not move again until her breathing dips low, into the quite rushing of sleep. 

Trust. Trust above all else. 

Perhaps now there is more good than ill in the things he's left unsaid. Perhaps, if the Maker is kind, the good will be enough to write over the ruin. 

Pressing her hand over his shivering heart, Cullen prays it is true. But the world has proved itself less than kind, many, many times before. 

He has so far to climb.

~ * ~

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you've made it all the way down here, I would love to hear from you, my brave, darling readers.
> 
> Porn's hard. Tips are welcome. Not just in reviews.
> 
> One more note: the sex in this fic isn't really ever going to be of the vanilla, PIV flavour, so if that's what you're hoping for, you may be a little disappointed. 
> 
> The only one keen on getting penetrated regularly here is Cullen, lol.


	19. though I seem tame

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Okay so this time I really do apologize. Please forgive me for taking so long. Also, please feel free to leave me a mountain of concrit in my inbox because I can't decide if I aggressively hate this chapter, or if I like it? Be mean. I need my ass kicked.
> 
> Also, I edited the previous chapter. Hopefully I've made it a little less ephemeral and a little more sweaty, lol.
> 
> Please enjoy, because you are all wonderful people to still be putting up with this ridiculous fic.
> 
> Chapter warning: there's a bit of mental dislocation on Cullen's part, near the end, but you'll know when you get there.

~ * ~

Warmth carries him up, thoughts rousing, rising with the sun, and he wakes quietly, to the corner of her mouth and the weight of her arm over his chest. 

How strange, to wake without the ghost of Her clinging to his neck. No night terrors. No teeth. 

A quiet mind. 

Instead it's this: her face – gentled, younger than her scowl and her hawkish eyes often allow. Here is something he can have. Here is something fleeting and small, easily kept. This he takes, and tucks away: a little bird, with little wings, to keep in the empty space beneath his ribs. He aches from thighs to shoulders, half a red, toothy necklace round his neck – decorated by her hands, by her teeth, by her nails – and yet, yet this is more. To lie here and watch her sleep, soft, and quiet, is more. 

As before, as always, he is left a pauper by things he will not name; shapes, ideas, he has only known in old and childish dreams. He has no language to give these things their proper place, for if he does, then they are real and they are his. He will have to keep them. 

She breathes beside him, and all the world, all that matters, might as well rest in the corner of her mouth. 

He is a fool, but a quiet one at least. With quiet dreams, it seems. 

The sun is a thin blue thread peaking through narrow awls of Serault glass, the smell of sex and sweat lingering in the sheets and the tangle of their limbs. There are ashes in the fireplace and a chill on the carpets, sharpening the air. The smell of burning leaves. And she is warm, and heavy, and quiet behind him; the song of her magic a low, rain-patter against his skin.

Oh, he is a fool.

To wake her now would be nearly unforgivable, but he has not forgotten: _Later, please. It has been a long night, joli. Let us speak of something else._

There is much between them still unsaid, so much so that it makes his nameless emotion seem the smallest, the least, the lesser of all his urgent words. 

“Mirèio?” he whispers, entirely too hopeful she will not wake. A pin-scratch line presses between her brows, the corners of her mouth turning down, and he bites the tip of his tongue.

“Are you watching me, joli?” she murmurs, voice still roughed up by sleep. A little smile on her lips, she pulls him closer, content to linger in the red-dark beneath her eyelids. 

“No.”

She snorts, the corners of her mouth curling up.

“Yes,” Cullen coughs. “Yes, I suppose I was. Am.”

“And how find you, me? In the morning light of course. Evening can be quite the liar. Perhaps you have had time to...”

“Don't,” Cullen interrupts. Her lips are still curled up, and he cares not a wit for the sourness of her mouth as he ducks close to taste the sigh on her tongue. “You needn't worry. Please don't. I – I am beyond satisfied. I have no words for what I am.”

“Content?” she laughs, lingering in the dark and painting pictures of his face: earnest, stricken, warm. Blank as parchment and eager to be written on again?

“That is not the half of it.” Truly it is not even a third, but Mirèio has not opened her eyes, even as her arm tightens around him, keeping their bodies sewn together. Words have never been his friends, and he has always proved too careless in their use.

“Good.” A cold nose buries itself against her neck, Cullen's breath skittering over the hollow of her throat and she smiles. “I am glad, joli. Truly.”

“Thank you,” he manages, the withered scent of oranges and bitter herbs under his nose. The skin beneath his lips is bitter, soft; he would taste her shiver with the flat of his tongue in spite of that bitterness. Her hands find his back, knuckles running along his spine and he tucks himself closer, cold sheets stinging the stripes on his ass and thighs. 

“But I am concerned about a great many things, joli.”

“Oh,” he sighs, trading his shivering for stiffness. Here, again, is that cliff's edge, and his fingers white on the red stones. 

“Inquisitor Trevelyan?” 

Cullen groans as she jolts up with an an indignant, graceless squawk, her arms crushingly tight around him for a moment. He rolls with her, into the warm hollow between their bodies. This is only the second time they have woken up together, and he had been so eager to see her eyes. But one pair of knuckles rapping at the door is all it takes, and the moment flies from him. 

Fucking Orlesians.

“Benedia dema, eh joli?” Mirèio hums. The curve of Cullen's cheek is most inviting, even as he turns pink beneath her scrutiny. She traces the bow of his mouth, as if she might find again all those magnificent noises he made for her last night. 

“Is it?” he laughs, trying on a smile, and finding it true. “I thought we were done with fools knocking on the Bear's door?” Her hair is a mess, her eyes unfocused and blinkered by the pre-dawn light: as bare now, as she was last night. The fingertip resting at the edge of his mouth becomes her palm and he laughs, joy bubbling up with his laughter.

“Ha!” she snorts, “that is only in Skyhold. I have no power here.”

“Your taillole says otherwise.” Last night returns – her hands at his waist, yellow silk sliding through her gloved hands – and Cullen finds he has the same questions. He doesn't understand any better, but that does not preclude his appreciation. 

Leaning down, the heat of her mouth touches the corner of his. “You remembered,” she smiles, fingers smoothing over the angry red half moons laid across his collarbones. 

“Your Worship?”

Mirèio frowns, turning to the voice beyond the door. “I despise it, you know: 'Your Worship'.” Her mouth turns the wrong manner of crooked. “Then again, I should expect no less from these people. Thedas is burning around them, and still they'll squabble over teaspoons placed on the wrong napkin.”

She makes to leave, and Cullen blurts out, “Must you? Can we not ignore them?” Last night had left him no time to plan a morning, but this is not what he had hoped for. “I am rather fed up with interruptions.” 

“I do so wish,” she laughs, her hands flashing between white bars of sunlight to twitch the bed curtains nearly closed. 

He does not concern himself with why. “You needn't wish.”

“Ah,” she hums, spying him between the drawn curtains of the bed, “but then some poor elvhen servant will have to go trudging back to another, slightly higher placed servant, and so on along the great chain until Celene herself is told, sotto voiced, that 'the Inquisitor won't answer her door! Majesty, what shall we do?'” 

“Oh,” he frowns, “well I suppose we can't have that.” Even under the first blush of morning, Halamshiral remains itself: a warren of golden teeth and animal intentions. “What would Celene say, to know her new ally dallies with a Fereldan commoner?”

Mirèio snorts, sharp-mouthed and sharp-eyed. “Celene has no business concerning herself with who occupies my bed. Very like the kettle calling the pot black, no?”

“What?” Cullen exclaims, eyebrows climbing up. “I beg your pardon, but what, precisely, is that meant to imply? Mirèio, what do you know?” Her pinched face disappears from sight before he can call her back, tell her she is naked to the waist, or that she looks fit to draw a dagger she doesn't have.

From the warm dark of the bed Cullen hears the door open, and a soft voice murmur: “Blessed morning to you, Your Worship. Her Majesty invites you to lauds in the chapel, followed by morning meal, of course.”

“Does she?” Bowing out of reflex, Mirèio murmurs, “As her August Majesty commands, it would be my great pleasure to attend.”

Somewhere, in the back of Cullen's sleep-dusty mind, a watch-bell starts ringing. 

The door clicks shut and this time the sound does not settle him; she returns to him wearing nothing more than a frown and heavy bars of sunlight on her naked shoulders. 

“Here,” she says, eyes like the edge of hammered steel, “are the consequences.”

Cullen stares down at the pair of robes laid neat upon the bench at the foot of the bed, artfully folded feasts for the eyes – one speaking of the intricate wealth of northern Marcher pride, and the other of Fereldan austerity – save for the sashes. Both are yellow. 

“What? What in the Make's name...?” Taking up the sash as if it were coiled to bite, he finds he cannot keep his panic in line. The soldier in him is well aware of declarations – of wearing heraldry as if were skin – but the Fereldan lad who climbed trees and skipped stones over shallow river beds is not that soldier. Rather, that lad feels small, and stood upon a great precipice. “Why do they match, Mirèio?”

“You know why.”

He does.

“Why?” Oh he is a fool.

“Her August Majesty, Celene De Valmonte, and her Most Gracious Marquise, Briala of the Dales, have invited us to Lauds in the chapel.”

“Ah,” Cullen exhales. That Maker-forsaken watch-bell is ringing again, louder with every passing breath he manages. “What have we gotten ourselves into? What diplomatic nightmare will Josephine have to untangle?”

“Breathe, joli.” Mirèio laughs: a clever masquerade for humour. “Everything will be alright.”

“Are you quite certain?” 

“No, not in the slightest,” is her reply, thin as her smile and the hoods of her hawkish eyes. “Though, perhaps, we should be grateful they sent us a bath.”

Cullen peers out from between the curtains to find a steaming copper tub placed before the mouth of the fireplace. “Ah,” he sighs, “well I suppose there's that.”

“Ah,” she repeats, offering her hand.

They bathe in silence, her fingers mapping the red welts and the purple-red blotches he wears around his neck like a garland of flowers. For his part, he is content with her mouth, and the crook of her neck. If they had time, he would want more. 

They dress in silence, at the mouth of one wide window, under the rising eye of the sun. No words exchanged, but the new, half useless language of each other. _Do you want this?_ said in the tilt of a brow, or the crook of a finger. _Are you ready?_ murmured in a twist of the lip, the crinkle of laughter at the edges of their eyes. When she reaches for her hair, Cullen bats her hands away and each shiver his fingers draw from her skin, these he takes and puts away. When he is done, his hands smell of oranges and bitter herbs. All this: more coins for his meagre purse.

“Thank you,” Mirèio whispers, and Cullen knows it would be a simple thing to die for her, and her cause. 

He knows: it is better to live, fool that he is.

~ * ~

Virena, a girl of six and ten summers with a switch-notch on her chin, arrives at the door on the striking of sixth morning bell. 

“Revered Mother Héloïse begins lauds at half past six, Your Worship. If you would follow me.” The girl bows, her words more to the carpet than either staring face.

Cullen breathes deep, and takes Mirèio's faint smile for a sword. 

“I must teach you northern Marcher, Commander,” Mirèio whispers. Shoulders firm and hands gloved, she walks beside the shorter man, and does not look at his face. Only ahead, through the mouths, the caverns, the wilds of marble and golden lions. “If you knew it better, we might speak in private.”

Cullen frowns, fingers resting over the knotted silk braid thumping against his hip. Straining to hear, he replies, “Is that at all safe? I would have thought most here would speak it.”

“Northern Marcher?” Mirèio snorts. “No no no. That tongue is much too low for these nobles. That's peasant gibberish. Three different dialects all mixed together? Maker forfend! How insulting, to speak like ill-bred merchants and villeins.”

“That is ridiculous,” Cullen snaps, striving to match her whisper. “Is there anything under the Maker's good sun that is not an insult to these people?”

“You would have no love for the answer, I'm afraid.” _A dead elf. A shackled mage. A silent peasant, neck appropriately bent. Ferelden reduced. La Lionne, triumphant at last, shaking the jesses of Nevarra and Antiva like one calls a hawk home from the hunt, as her ancestors did._ “It's nothing good.”

“Ah,” he sighs.

“Ah,” she replies.

There is no part of this situation that lends itself to humour, and yet, Cullen manages some poor imitation of amused. Perhaps it is the stripes on his arse, or the purple-red teethmarks he wears like a necklace. “Will all your answers henceforth be so singular, Inquisitor?”

“Until we are a dozen score leagues from the mere hint of Orlesian on the wind, possibly,” Mirèio mutters. The girl has led them from the halls and out onto gravel, passed the yellow warren of a hawthorn hedge-maze, and a row of mossy fountain mouths tended to by tiny, wound-red songbirds. She stops, staring at the green, time softened stones and the little red bodies. The birds perch on the gurgling mouths, a gathered flock waiting for the sun lurking beneath the hedgerows. 

The red feathers seem familiar. She remembers: the birds are fire finches. Fereldan fire finches just like the ones Cullen wore at his throat on the Wild Night. 

“Joli,” she laughs, drawing his attention, “do you remember?” 

Following the line of her finger, Cullen turns to the fountains. “Fire-finches? What am I supposed to be remembering about songbirds, exactly?” Cullen asks. 

“Satinalia,” Mirèio says, hiding her mirth behind her teeth.

“Ah,” Cullen nods, serious as stone. He has no need to be as red as the birds. “What are you all doing in an Orlesian bath? Traitors, the lot of you.” The birds pay him no mind.

“Do not begrudge the birds their song, Commander,” Mirèio replies, mouth close enough to touch the shell of his ear. “It is not their fault some Fereldans prefer to sing at night.”

The thin wheat-stalk of a girl coughs discreetly, and Cullen chokes on a lungful of air as Mirèio's laughter keeps time with the susurus of gravel beneath their feet. 

They leave the fountain and its birds behind, falling to silence until, beyond the servant girl's thin shoulder, Cullen spies a knot of masks and coloured silk. For a moment he is sorry for the birds: regardless of their wings, they are far from home.

“My dear,” Vivienne calls, her gloved hand flashing up for only a moment. “How fortunate you could join us for Lauds. And you as well, Commander Rutherford. And so well dressed!”

Cullen flushes. “I am afraid we must thank Her Majesty for that. It was through no skill of my own.” His bow is perfunctory, but aptly done. He knows this because Vivienne does not frown at him, but smiles instead. 

“Of course, Commander,” Celene spreads her hands, the warmth of her face still thin as spring ice. “No thanks are necessary. The Inquisition has done Orlais a great service, and now you must have some little reward now. The rest, later.”

Reward? The thought is chilling. What reward is silk and fur? Or is there more to it than courtly appearances? He wants no reward from this Empress' hands. Neither does Mirèio, of that he is certain. 

Another perfunctory bow, and Cullen says, “Your Majesty is most gracious. The Inquisition is grateful for any such gifts.” 

Mirèio is only half watching: hearing instead the wind through young, green leaves, and the calling of small birds; Cullen's beating heart and the steady patter of her own. Until one gloved hand comes to rest on her forearm. 

“How does the morning find you, Inquisitor?” Vivienne asks, voice low enough to slink under the ears of others. 

“Satisfied,” is the best, least offensive reply she can manage. Cullen's breathing ticks up, and she keeps her grin pinned down by her teeth. Barely. “But that is no great surprise to anyone.”

“Ah,” Vivienne says with a bell-chime note, “how I do miss those nights. Dancing until my feet hurt. Wine and indulgence in the air. Eager hands. Delightful. We have spent too much time in the mountains, my dear. Nights like these should not be a rarity.” 

Cullen snorts, and does not quite manage to cover it with a cough. 

Before Vivienne can do anything louder than frown, a third voice interrupts.

“Do you find Halamshiral agreeable in the morning light, Your Worship?” asks Briala, her lavender silk mingling with Celene's as if all were colour and water meeting between brushstrokes. Celene chose spring violet and blue and plum, had wheat and lavender woven into their hair: the growth of new things, young things. A lie, but an artful one at least. “Some find it diminished,” she continues, “as if waking from a dream.” 

The silver thread around her neck is a greater lie than the silk. 

“No, my Lady, I do not find it diminished,” Mirèio replies. “Halamshiral is as much a wonder to me as it was only last night.”

“Such is the way of things, I am afraid,” Vivienne's intervenes, smoothing a hand down the Inquisitor's arm. The girl is hopeless, but one cannot teach children to swim by throwing them into the swiftest part of the river. “This has given us a great reminder of how far we have come my dear, has it not? Just think, our little band of cottages in Haven, all those pilgrims seeking our aid above all others. And now we are an Inquisition strong, and undivided.”

“With fewer tents and more pilgrims, I might add,” Mirèio laughs, squeezing Vivienne's fingers. 

“And such a triumph it is,” Celene replies, extending one pale hand as if returning something to the fold, “to stand as equals with our throne and our people. Such an organization has great reason to be proud of its accomplishments. Together, we shall do much with this boon.”

“As your Majesty says.” Mirèio bends her neck: the narrowest excuse for genuflection she can manage.

“I for one,” Briala smiles, eyes cool between the windows of her wheat and honey mask, “am most eager for our work to begin. As her Majesty says: there is much to be accomplished. Despite your isolation in the Frostbacks, you have made your presence felt in nearly all corners of Thedas. Such might is not to be squandered.”

“That might is young, Marquise. Young things need careful tending, or they will fail when it matters most.” The Inquisitor's smile is thin, the grey of her eyes cutting through her lashes. “And an untested thing is not one that will survive.” 

“You survived Halamshiral,” Briala answers, her mouth a match to the Inquisitor's. “That is an accomplishment in and of itself.” 

“Indeed,” Vivienne says smoothly. “And we are eager to continue to do so.”

The first, high note of the petite-cloche shivers through the air, calling worshipers to gather at the mouth of the chapel. Revered Mother Héloïse, eyes veiled and hands upturned to the sun, stands beneath the points of Andraste's crown, her gown stark as hen blood against the white, limestone glare.

“Inquisitor,” Vivienne nods before moving ahead to take Laurent's arm. She had fallen in behind Celene, as always, on many mornings like this one, now made innumerable and unremarkable by the time that has heaped itself between that girl in borrowed silk, and herself as she is now. That Briala walks a'pace with Celene is just another curiosity in an already curious life. One that will either fade as it did before, or shake Orlais to her foundations. There will be no half-measures this time. She cannot help but wonder which of them wished to set Gaspard's head above the lion gate, and who ordered it done. 

Vivienne is a safe distance ahead before Cullen returns to Mirèio's side, but the blistering cut of her eyes sews his mouth shut. Without a word, she extends her arm and, for him, it is always easy to fall into step beside her. They move forward, two paces behind the appropriately demure train of Vivienne's cloak.

Cullen has never seen a chapel so fine. This one is ancient, its ceilings vast as the split open belly of a dragon, its ribs stripped to sun-bleached bones, and its windows narrow, colour-filled eyes. The tiles set into the floor shape the white and gold disk of the sun, Mother Héloïse's robes bisecting the Maker's light as the red of Andraste's sword once did. 

The Imperial Court seats itself with practiced grace: an old ritual in old hands. Briala holds her head high as if she has been sitting beside Celene for a decade. Murmurs nip at her ears and she hears little things held close to downturned lips. As if a quiet mouth lessens the barb and its sting. 

She is the only elf in the chapel. 

The only elf without a uniform.

Mirèio is adrift, following Vivienne's train like a child. Lauds was not a ritual she kept in Montjuïc. Only in Ostwick proper, when duty and occasion saw her home, and standing beside her mother. Never of her own design. Never by choice.

“Please be seated, Your Worship,” Celene says before reaching up to settle her veil down over her eyes. “You must become accustomed to your place in this world. The sooner, the better.” 

A woman comes to stand beside Celene, wearing a mask of tooth-coloured ivory, the deep-set lines bracketing her mouth lending her a dour, whittled-down air: a narrow, thread-thin woman for a narrow, thread-thin court. She barely reaches Celene's shoulder, but her voice is a thunder-clap. 

“Your Majesty must be joking!” the woman all but barks. “Celene, it is inappropriate for a mage to sit behind the royal person. Lauds is a time of reflection, of asking the Maker's forgiveness. This is no place for mages. Or any others who, by nature or birth, are outside the Maker's Grace.” She does not look at Briala – there is no need. 

The gathered court shivers, suddenly made one creature, one pair of eyes, and one slack mouth; the jackdaws are back, all their gleaning turned to the _other_ stood in their midst. 

“How dare you!” Cullen bellows, reaching for the sword he does not have. “How dare you speak to the Inquisitor in such a manner!” His fingers close around air, and the rage bubbling beneath his ribs turns bitter. But her face is stone and indifference. And he flounders, bereft, seeing only the red wailing of Haven, and her flashing sword. 

“Madame de Valmonte, that is a most ungrateful thing to say,” Vivienne replies, sunlight winking hard as the flat of a blade between the peaks of her horns. “The breach was sealed by the Inquisitor, and no other. The mages loyal to the Circle, and to Orlais, were instrumental in that task. Our magic serves man, as it always has. Such loyalty should be commended, not scorned.”

“Loyalty?” The weathered matron laughs, a crow's rattling. “My dear Madame de Fer, one good mage among a hundred is nothing. One hundred amongst five hundred, is nothing. Mages have reached too high. They are in desperate need of reminding where it is they belong. ”

The woman thumps her ivory-tipped cane once, twice against the stone, and barks out, “You will go no farther, no higher. The Maker and His Bride dictated you your place. It is His will you accept it.”

“The Court will not be used like this, your Majesty!” Another shouts, a clamouring, faceless voice in the press of the crowd. 

“Gaspard was right to put his faith in the Generals.” Another, and another. More hands like weeds, reaching to the sun of her Majesty's attention. “This stands in defiance of the Maker, your Majesty!”

“Her Majesty's aunt is right, this is a sham,” a man shouts. He is not ten steps from Celene and Briala, wearing a mask dark enough for old blood, one hand on the crop he wears in place of his sword, as if a lash will serve well enough. “We are not beholden to some insolent, heretic Free Marcher whose mother lacked sense enough to throw her into the Circle and be washed of that shame, as all good Houses do! Such a wilful lack of piety and obeisance to the Maker and His dictates is a crime that cannot go unanswered! We should not give legitimacy to apostates, traitors or abominations.” 

“Gaspard is dead,” Celene interrupts, fury thinning her ice until she runs red and sharp, “and lesser now than the dirt I buried his headless corpse in! What he was, I have taken and destroyed. What he desired would have seen Orlais' high houses emptied of living heirs. He would have fed your sons and daughters to the carrion birds and called it right, in the name of some silly line on a map. I will not break this nation, or diminish my throne, so that you can sit on a scrap of Ferelden land and call it yours!” 

“Majesty, I do humbly beg your forgiveness, but this is wrong,” the man presses, grimacing. “Orlais has survived Blight upon Blight, but now she teeters on the very brink! We have grown lax. We have let our lessers dictate our future.”

“My cousin is dead, Duc Jean-Gaspard de Lydes. He is dead because I wished it so, and because the future of Orlais demanded it. The Golden Throne will not condescend to discuss matters beyond your understanding, but what you have said to Her Holiness, Inquisitor Trevelyan, must be answered.” 

Briala's fingers have gathered up the cuff of one sleeve, and Celene stills. There are only a few wrinkles in the fabric, but the weight is there, the reprimand. _Hold fast, Celene,_ she hears, imagines, pretends, _there is too much blood under your nose. Be still._

If a clot of air could be an animal, then it would be a toothsome one: an angry, snarling thing, riven with the dying peal of morning bells. Mother Héloïse and her cantors are watching, hands raised as if to weave the Maker and his mercy from stone, and smoke, and altar cloth. As if animals are made quite by waving incense under their noses. 

All eyes turn to the Inquisitor, and Cullen, fool that he is, wonders which of these ignorant dogs will burn first. There are sparks in her palms, tiny tongues of flame wreathing her knuckles in smoke. 

A bitter realization rises up in him: without the lyrium, it does not matter what she chooses – he could not stop her. Worse still, a small, private part of him does not want to try. 

There are other choices open to him. He need not look to her in all things. “As Commander of the Inquisition's forces I hereby formally challenge...” 

Mirèio jolts, Cullen's outrage shaking her back into herself. With all the anger she can manage, she spits, “Enough! Enough. Commander Rutherford is man of honour, your Majesty, but he does not speak for me.” For a moment, she has Celene's attention, but her gaze is weights and measures – nothing more. 

“Inquisitor Trevelyan, as you command,” Cullen demurs, bowing low. He doesn't know if he is angrier at himself, this duc, or her, but there's something ugly stuck in his throat. There is no time for him to dig out. 

Last night she felt a child in a costume. It is no different now. Hands on the crop tucking into her taillole, she says, “Let me tell you a story, Duc Jean-Gaspard.” 

The man opens his mouth to protest, but she thrusts the Anchor out, palm flashing between pools of red-gold light. 

This green star burning in her hand is the finest hammer she's ever held. She tests its weight, and silence wells up like blood, raw and vivd. 

“Peace,” she drawls, “it is not a long tale. Do you recall the youngest son of our Lady Andraste and the Betrayer?”

“Evrion?” the man snaps, “yes I am well aware...”

The star in her hand crackles, drops of bitter green falling onto the red carpet to burn for a moment, before vanishing.

“You will not speak again unless I welcome it, Duc.”

The Duc wears the look of an animal pacing between tree shadows, staring at the wide, open field, measuring its high-flung sun.

“Then you must know that the Marches were born from humility,” she continues, bringing both palms together as if there are valleys and rivers and mountains between her hands. “One stubborn man determined to be more than the ruin of his father's name. And from that humility we took up our lands and our peoples and made great states that have withstood Blights, Exalted Marches, Tevinter slavers and even an Arishok. So, if you wish to lay claim to your words before her Majesty's court, I invite you to step out from beneath our Lady's gaze and draw your sword. If not, than this is a most fortunate opportunity for you, my Lord.”

“And what opportunity would that be, apostate?”

“The opportunity to learn a lesson at the hands of your betters, Ser.”

The court erupts, howling, wings snapping; voices climbing, climbing.

Cullen cannot watch her do this: be lead into some sham pissing match with a worm in fine silks. Unthinking, blindly, he reaches for the cuff of her sleeve, but she climbs over them all, voice cracking down like a lash seeking blood.

“Not six months ago there was a hole in the sky, Duc. The free mages of the Inquisition sealed it. We risked our lives so that Thedas might continue as the Maker wills it.” Taking one step forward, Mirèio jabs a finger at the Duc's chest, eyes dark, narrowed, sea-like. “So I say again, claim your words before all Orlais and draw your sword!” Hand wreathed in crackling green, voice rising, rising with the sun, she spits, “I have no patience for slander. My people did not die in the mud and the snow so you could call them faithless beasts!”

“Perhaps there has been an overstatement on my part, mage.”

“Pick up your sword!” she bellows. “We will see which of our lands breeds the more honourable soul.”

“Majesty,” the Duc pleads, turning his ashen face to Celene's cold eyes, and razor mouth, “I must protest: we do not duel with mages. They have no standing!” 

“And to think, Duc, your cousin Remache met his end by Gaspard's own sword for his dishonourable conduct,” Briala interrupts, smoothing out the planes of her plum and honey robes. She has never been more grateful for a mask, or the tiny, golden lion perched on its brow. “I wonder, is it the de Lydes blood, or is just the men of your House? I would think you would take better care. How shameful would it be for House de Lydes to suffer another blow to its once great Name.”

The assembled court turns to the Inquisitor again, and the silence falls on her shoulders – a crushing, greedy, breathing _thing_. 

“The Marquise is correct, Duc,” Celene says with a smile that is not at all a smile, but a slow spreading of thin lips. “You have had time and leash enough to bark at the heels of our guests. Take your seat, and do not speak again.”

The eyes of the Court follow the man as he bows – his shadow falling over the points of Celene's silk shoes – and walks down the aisle as if to the scaffold. Those jackdaw eyes follow him to the pews where he seats himself in silence, his wife and daughter choosing Andraste's empty gaze over his ashen face.

“Be seated,” Mother Héloïse intones, the sour wound of her mouth the only evidence of her displeasure, “and hear the Maker's Words.”

The first note is frail, Exaltations trembling in the mouths of the gathered cantors, Andraste's victory ringing through the columns of bone-white stone, while wolves hunt herds of deer, and the old earth rises up in ash, and fire. 

But she is not here with them, or their words. She is far away, high up on the northern ridge watching her flock crop grass and her cousin string his bow, the smoke of the morning camp fire still clinging tight to her skin. Down in the valley is the noise of tumbling of bells and the bleating of yearlings, the calls of the shepherds as they count heads and send the dogs off to mark the day's boundaries. 

_Gone far away, sister?_ she hears. _Gathering up grass is their job,_ Arnau laughs, _not yours. Tell me, did you see the figures from Val d'Or? The demand for murex, for our wool and silk gussets is outrageous this year. Those Orlesians must be in the midst of one of those springtime fancies of theirs. Oh to be an Orlesian, and hang gold from trees for art, no?_

Cullen's hand comes to rest on her knee, and her frail, painstakingly built escape shatters; the Chant of Exaltations flows on, Mother Héloïse leading bravely, despite the limping court, and the bitter stink of anger in the air. 

His thumb slides along the ridge of her knee, warm, heavy, and she does not hate it, but it clogs her mind with _now_. And it is best for everyone if she stays far, far away. Breathe locked into the bottom of her lungs, she wanders out of the valley, drawing further inward to the black sand beneath the high walls of yellow-bannered Ostwick; the sea. 

And there she stays, clinging to the rocks and reaching for white sea-foam, as the Chant moves on with the sun until it dies. 

The bells ring again, eating up the last note, and the court rises at Mother Héloïse's silence.

She does not watch the flock as it goes out through the doors in a rush of slippered feet and low murmurs. Even in the dark, in the red behind her eyes, she knows Celene and Briala are the last to stand, remaining still until the Revered Mother and her cantors take to the private wing of the chapel.

Cullen's thumb is still drawing warmth over the ridge of her knee. But she's waded out into shallows, Dairsmuid's spires at her back. Instead of Celene regretting the lost opportunity to see the Bear in action, she hears the slap of waves against her thighs; Asha's laughter running out with the tide. 

Briala remains stock still until Celene's shadow has passed from beneath the mouth of the chapel, and the world is made honest and plain again. Reaching up, she undoes the ribbons holding her mask in place. It feels good to let the damn thing swing – to be bare but not bare-faced. 

“You made a difficult choice, Inquisitor.”

“Choice?” Mirèio barks a laugh. The hand on her knee tightens.

“If it is any comfort to you, the result would have been the same, Gaspard or Celene. You are not Madame de Fer. You will not have their love.”

“The Lioness' court has a strange understanding of love,” Mirèio replies. “I have no use for it, my Lady. No need.”

“I am glad to hear you say so, Inquisitor.” 

“Why?”

Briala sighs; she does not look to the Bride, or her sparse altar. “Because use is more important. And what is useful survives, Inquisitor.”

Unthinking, she blurts out, “I hate these people. After,” tongue pressed firm to the back of her teeth, she chews, “after the alienage, would you not have preferred Gaspard?” 

_Tell me I have not condemned you,_ she wishes to say. _Tell me I have not made you a slave._

Like a wrinkled stitch made clean, Briala's face smoothes out. “Some hateful things are more useful than others, Inquisitor. I'm sure you understand.”

In her head there is a moment or two bracketed by absence, a chalk-pit nothingness circled by measured stones, because Briala goes between one blink and the next, and suddenly she is alone. Or, nearly alone. His hand hasn't moved. If he is looking at her, she does not turn to see.

The silence runs on, and in the fractional space between Mirèio's body and Cullen's, every breath is another copper weight added to an already over-tightened string. 

Where to start? Where to try? What to say? How? All these things run through Cullen's thoughts, tangling together like weeds in a muddy stream until one breaks free. He settles on trying – just trying. 

“Mirèio,” he starts, but before he is done with the breathless oh of the last syllable, she is up and peeling away, boots thudding against the stone. Instinctively, he follows. 

He tries again.

“Mirèio,” he says, a burr in his throat. She's taken herself to Andraste's stone knees, to pace before the flat face of the Lady's naked sword. It's a wretched sight, and Cullen cannot find the words for why. Only that she looks small, as she did last night: black on red, as if stood in fire. 

“I should have seen this!” she hisses, spits. “I should have suspected.”

“What?” Cullen barks, reaching out to still her frenzied pacing. This is not the pacing of a predatory; this is a cage, and the measuring of its bars. “Suspected what, Mirèio?”

“The silk,” she gestures, teeth flashing. “The fucking silk. Celene has all but shackled me to her. Maker, I'm such a fool.”

Her boots are a lash on the carpet, and Cullen finds a stone in his throat. She's not been like this since weeks after Haven, and it had taken drunkenness to loosen her tongue far enough to cough up her fears. Right now, he has nothing to ply her with but his own voice.

“Why are you a fool?” He retorts, rooted, hand frozen in an aborted reach. “Mirèio,” he says again, “Mirèio stop.”

“Celene has made Briala more than just a marquise.”

“I beg your pardon?” Cullen laughs, thrown.

“She's acknowledged her,” Mirèio spits again. “Maîtresse-en-titre,” she laughs, a harsh, grating sound. “The woman is fiercer than I thought.”

The heavy thudding of Mirèio's boots has taken up residence in the back of his skull and Cullen shakes his head, words coming sharp, quick. “What does that mean? And why in the Maker's name does it matter?” Mirèio sighs – a simple expulsion of breath that is inscrutable to him, unreadable.

“It means that Celene has made Briala her mistress. Her only, publicly acknowledged mistress.” A scowl as black as tar darkens her expression, and she bares her teeth again, the air cold in the red of her mouth. “She has done this by acknowledging you, as mine. More or less,” she adds.

An arrow might as well have struck him dead centre, torn through the meat of his lungs and gone on its merry, gore-covered way. “I – I am sorry. I – Maker's Breath,” he snaps, winded and reaching for her again. “Is that why the silk matched?”

She nods, eyes steady, hunting. “I am sorry, Cullen.”

“Maker, Mirèio, I don't care,” he argues, red to the neck and sucking air in as if he has one hand pressed over a wound. “I don't care. This can't be,” he falters, “this can't be why you're upset.”

She recoils as if struck. 

The shadow of the sword between them stretches long.

“Let Celene hang for all I care. Let make her statements. What they said, what that bastard Duc said...” He is not pleading with her, but he would rather her sit, and breathe. He would rather kneel before her, touch her knees. He would rather the chance to write over that quiet desolation in her eyes.

“No.”

“Mirèio.” He is pleading now. “Please, you cannot...”

“No.”

Half in shadow, all her sharpness poured into the bend of her mouth, she turns from the Lady's sightless gaze to watch him for a moment. Her eyes give him nothing – blank and flat as a mirror, and Cullen shivers, struck silent. Unlike before, the light is not kind to her face.

Shaking her head once, twice, she squares her shoulders and goes out into the cold air beyond, saying nothing. 

Cullen follow, old voices dogging his heels.

~ * ~

The wind is a limp and lifeless thing sulking through the streets and the alleyways, lingering like the stench of rotted fish. Sweat drips into his eyes, doublet pasted to his neck, the harbour's low tide reek fermenting in his lungs. The wings at his temples are cold, and the dull roaring of the Gallows' denizens scuttles across his cheeks like a creeping beetle.

There is a long, long shadow stretched out before him.

_Tell me, Knight-Captain,_ Hawke asks, mouth an ugly slash beneath bitter, blackbird eyes, _is there is a man under than dour, Blighted mask of yours?_

Cullen snarls, finds his tongue sharply pointed; he makes to answer, and outrage sticks its fingers into the corners of his mouth, pulls.

_You see_ , the tall mess of war paint and dark, hooked glances murmurs, sometimes I am confused by your claim of kinship between the pair of us. I see no man before me. I see a dog. You open that ignorant mouth of yours and it is Meredith's voice I hear. Do you enjoy having a creature like that wag your tongue, Knight-Captain? 

Hawke shifts, the edges of his smile splitting too wide, too-white, teeth rattling like sheep's knuckles on a string. 

_Aveline tells me your Knight-Commander executed three mages from Starkhaven today. For sport. To set an example._

An old, familiar retort manages to claw past the narrowing of his throat. _We are losing the battle, Viscount Amell. Every day more and more mages are born, and we cannot hope to match them all. Sometimes a little evil must be done in service to a greater good. If the mages would only cooperate, the Knight-Commander would not have to take such drastic measures._

Shame cracks down between the valley of his shoulder blades, hot as a lash. 

Why did he say that? 

He did not mean it. 

He cannot mean it, any of it.

It is not true.

Who is using his tongue?

Hawke's daggers split the light, winking under the high noon sun. _Do you truly believe that? You wear Her sword on your plackart and still you think She would approve?_

_Magic is meant to serve Man, never to rule over him,_ is a racked, wracked, groan on his lips. _You know this, Viscount._

_But you are not a man! You're the dog who took my sister._

Hawke slips between the Gallows' shadows like water. His teeth are too long, his hands too sharp. 

_First it is the mages from Starkhaven, next it will be that girl from Ostwick._

**No.**

_Poor thing. Too proud. Much too proud._

_Demon,_ he hisses, reaches for the hilt of his sword. His fingers curl round the leather but all is smoke and ashes and he stumbles, stones black beneath his feet; wailing, screaming voices rise, riding high on a wind thick with the char of burning bodies. 

_Oh no, Knight-Captain, not I._

_You._

Caught beneath the sprawl of the mage-tower, in the heart of the Gallows, is a tall unmoving shape. Head held ever high, mouth silver'd and crooked, she is a carven face, and stone hands; Her merciful gaze.

_Will you let them make her soft, and sweet?_ Hawke's dagger shears through the light as the ash piles up on their shoulders. _Will you teach her to speak in that low murmur? The one they use when they say 'Good Knight, serah, if we pray hard enough, the Maker will forgive us the sin of what we are. Do not raise your fist, for I am the least of the Maker's children.'_

Her name clings to his teeth, his lips, his skin. _Run, runrunrun_ beats away in his skull like a watch bell freshly struck. But where is there to run to? The shadow of the Gallows is long and wide, falling over him, and her, and Hawke. 

_If you act quickly, teach her to grind herself into pieces to avoid their lash, you might not have to steal the light from her eyes. But why bother? Isn't it better to gentle them all? Safer?_

Hawke laughs and laughs and laughs; the fire climbs, pouring smoke into the hot, white sky. _You know, I'm sure someone still has that letter you wrote: 'Please, oh Most Holy, grant us our request. Let us blot out their lights one by one. They are too troublesome when they are whole'._

_It's never dark when they wear the Sun on their brow, isn't that right, Knight-Captain? Just quiet, quieter. Isn't that what you want? ___

__Lyrium's cold hush works down from his wrist to set the runes alight and the Brand sings in his hand, hot and crackling: a long, red tongue made to devour._ _

___There was never any mercy in you for those most in need. You are not kind. Not gentle. After all, the lies we tell ourselves live the longest, live truest._ _ _

__Her eyes are cold; Hawke's shadow bleeds over the stones, darting towards her; the Brand sings in his hand._ _

___Joli.__ _

__A dark, slick river trickles down from the ruined mouth of the chapel, down the steps, out across the stones; a thick, coppery tang rises up, and he gags, heaves up black and red._ _

__The blood flows hot enough to foam._ _

___Joli.__ _

__He blinks, shudders, and the world slides over his eyes, reality pushing into him like the tip of a blade; he chokes, finds her face above him, grey eyes pensive and mouth turned down._ _

__Her hands are gentle, fingers tucked behind his ears. “You wouldn't wake.”_ _

__The words stick in his throat, cling to his teeth as he sucks air into his lungs. He wants to push her away, hide his face from her deliberately quiet eyes._ _

__The carriage jolts, sending her fingers skittering down his neck._ _

__“Forgive me,” Cullen murmurs. “I did not intend to fall asleep.”_ _

__She makes a vague noise, half a note of humour in her mouth. “It's hardly a punishable offence, joli.”_ _

__“No?” he replies, trying on a smile and discarding it just as quickly._ _

__“No.” She sits back, slinging her ankle over her knee, fingers drumming a nervous beat onto the bench. The noise is hollow, filling up the too-quiet carriage. “No,” she says again._ _

__Cullen scrubs a hand over his face. “When?” he asks. “Why not?”_ _

__She shrugs, and the sun dips further down behind the budding trees._ _

__~ * ~_ _

__Beneath his feet the dirt is soft, springy with the weight of water and the newness of young grass; the Bull is building the campfire high, the scent of dry wood thick in the air; the sound of Cassandra's whetstone grinding sharp against her blade drags over his skin – the welcome noise of an old, old routine. The sun is hot on his back, heavy with the last hours of its light._ _

__Travelling makes people strange: everything and everyone becomes a little different, in different increments. And now that there is no great rush pushing them on, they have time to linger. To wander. With Orlais at their backs, a breath or twelve is possible, and it would seem the Inquisition is eager to just _breathe_._ _

__He watches._ _

__It's the unsettling of routines: brings out different faces. He's seen it before, knows it first hand. Mage hunting had been a speciality of his, once._ _

__Here, out beneath the wide bowl of the sky, she and her companions are different. Some are a little freer. Some are a little quieter. Some are shadows, content to sit under the sun and keep their tongues to themselves._ _

__Here, it would seem her smile is not so readily shared. Beside her, Dorian rubs his hands together, runs his fingers over the edges of the scroll with a practiced reverence. Theirs is a narrow world: a little point of other in a circle of familiarity._ _

__Cullen watches, torn by a sense of his own trespassing. Is this curiosity, or the old, well-worn fear? Is this the fear that makes him lesser, makes him remember how useful it was to be cold and thoughtless and cruel?_ _

__He watches Dorian open a scroll inch by careful inch, and their conversation turns hushed, eager. Mirèio's voice flexes sharp with a Tevene declarative, and The Bull snorts, rolls his eyes._ _

__Cullen bites down on the inside of his cheek, chewing up some a half-formed retort. It's not his place to wonder at what's being said._ _

__Dorian flicks his attention to the Bull, a bundle of private shapes passing between them as the qunari stacks the last cord of wood and rises up from his hunch, knees creaking in the quiet. A murmured word, soft as a sigh against the shell of an ear, and the Bull settles beside the man, big hands dangling between his knees._ _

__The tips of his ears turn red, and Cullen must look away, floundering in the circle of company he counts rather more than familiar friends. Dorian has always kept his affairs close to his skin, and Cullen does not begrudge him his silence, understands it all too well. But this is strange, unsettling._ _

__“They are like this often, Commander,” Cassandra huffs. “Pay them no mind.”_ _

__Dipping his polishing cloth into the little bowl of oil balanced on his knee, Varric chuckles. “Bristles and Sparkler don't like to share.”_ _

__“Share?” Cullen frowns, gaze darting back to the pair._ _

___Mages care for their own kind.__ _

__“I forget, but you have not travelled with us before.” The whetstone is an awkward weight in her hand and so she sets it down, and turns to Cullen. Before she can address the confusion wicking to life in his narrowed gaze, Solas interrupts._ _

__“I believe the Inquisitor's words were: 'Some things are not meant to be shared in the south.'” Solas smiles, and it is nothing more than a collection of teeth between the generous line of his lips. “An admirable sentiment, for a hedge-mage and an altus. A desire to learn, to grow, these things are not to be sneered at, most especially in the face of great personal risk.”_ _

__Mirèio's laughter is cool, drawn long over her surprise. “Solas,” she replies, nodding, two fingers pressed to her collarbone: an understanding shared out with no hands put to work in the offering. “Ghi'lan.”_ _

__“De da'rahn, lan'sila.”_ _

__Cassandra sighs, mouth as tight as Solas' is mocking._ _

__Cullen looks to Mirèio and finds an exquisite, measured blankness in her too-sharp gaze; and in the cut of her glance is the stone, is her pacing in Andraste's shadow, and the cold span of hands between them; the white yard; the high tower walls; refusal._ _

__“Bull,” she murmurs, and beside her Dorian frowns. This is a tiresome little fabula, an old, thread-bare argument they have had with one another many times. What he does not like, she will not change, not even if he is right._ _

__“Sure thing boss,” the Bull replies, big hands scooping through the little hill of kindling to toss a bundle of stripped twigs into her waiting hand._ _

__Her mouth rounds into a soundless o, one long breath drawn in, and on the release the twigs are crackling, little orange tongues flicking against the lengthening shadows. She tosses the bundle into the little tower of wood, and returns to Dorian, and the scroll on his lap._ _

__Cullen watches._ _

__Her shoulders are rigid, head held high as if to ward against a blow; the little wound of her grin is a weighty, abstract shape._ _

__None know of what small, warm words lived in the curl of her lips at sunrise; none can see the red lines on his ass, or necklace of her teeth-marks around his neck. He cannot call on those things here, not now. He cannot dismiss the members of her inner Circle, cannot put his hands on her knees, pull the river of her braids between his fingers, ask her to explain._ _

__This is not a line he can cross, and the words on his tongue are not for the ears of others._ _

___Why are you different? What are you hiding? Why? Are you afraid? Why will you not tell me?_ _ _

__Tevene flickers to life again, and Dorian's hands go up and down, like birds. Mirèio tugs at the mage's hands, adjusting, correcting, and they are again two odd shapes in a sea of whey-faced ignorance._ _

__Cullen watches, remembers – walking through his memory of that bitter-cold night up on the heights of the battlements: _I should not be here. I thought the Inquisition would have no further use for a creature like me._ _ _

___I should not be here.__ _

__He has never wholly understood the grief in those words; the ones about fear, about shame, and the absence of sleep, the terror of power, those he understood. Not the smaller ones, not the ones that left her hunched, diminished._ _

__Cullen watches, remembering her bent frame braced between the stars and Halamshiral's golden teeth. He wonders how long she has been hiding, and how much._ _

__If he digs now, will she let him see? If he asks her, will she speak to him without the shadow of the Lady's sword laid between them?_ _

__“Cariñu,” she reprimands, pushing her fist into Dorian's palm, “a bowl,” she laughs, “not a claw.”_ _

__Cullen watches._ _

__A spark passes between the two mages – less than an echo – and what little lyrium remains in his bones hums to him, reaching thin, greedy hands out to taste what would have burned in his lungs were he still bound: her magic. Breathing in the roil – gritty, spring-damp black earth, fire, salt – he fits his mouth around its crackling stone. He swallows, sharp._ _

__Were he still the Knight-Captain, he could have followed her trail across stone, and wood and dirt like a dog with blood in its nose._ _

__The lyrium recedes and he is left shivering, even with the sun at his back. There's no blade sharp enough to pry out his fresh wanting._ _

__Cole turns earnest eyes on him, looking like the world's most honest, goggle-eyed river-creature, and Cullen barely manages to keep from jumping up as if burned._ _

__“No, Cole,” he blurts out, scrambling to quiet the buzzing in his head, exchanging red weeds for green._ _

__“But,” Cole insists, spindle-fingers ticking one by one through the air, “I can help.”_ _

__“No,” Cullen repeats._ _

__“So,” Josephine begins, setting her quill down with a little click, “is this where either one of you condescends to tell me what happened at Lauds this morning?” There is no real heat in her voice, but a thin sliver of a reprimand._ _

__“No,” Mirèio laughs._ _

__“Well when?” Josephine fusses, smoothing out the pinion of her quill. “These matters are not to be taken lightly, my lady. I assure you...”_ _

__“Tomorrow, perhaps,” Mirèio interrupts, that damnable laughter back in her mouth._ _

__The conversation resumes; the fire hisses; somewhere, a covey of birds climbs up into the sky, wings parting air like a ripple over water; someone laughs._ _

__Cullen watches._ _

__~ * ~_ _

__Cassandra unrolls her bedding first, moving to sit at the mouth of the tent with her heels pinned under her thighs and her hands threaded together over her knees. She does not bother with titles._ _

__“Ask, Cullen. I am certain this evening has not been a happy one.”_ _

__The last moments of the red-fingered sun rest on Cassandra's shoulders, holding there on her silver lines, before inching down behind the trees; Cullen finds the weight of his questions pull at the corners of his mouth. Unsaid, they drag him down, bend his neck._ _

__Laughter echoes as thick and sticky as honey; he flinches._ _

__Mirèio and Dorian are warding the camp, their trail marked by a flickering covey of sparrow-larks – little mage-light constructs with lacy wings that rustle like little chimes. The mages' silver warding rods flash, cut through the air and the dirt; the patterns bringing a familiar hush that settles over his skin._ _

__Cullen breathes in, flattening his hands to the tent floor, caught by the strange music of the little birds and their little wings._ _

___You are a fool, Cullen, to be sat here. Separated. She is drawing lines again, and you are on the wrong side._ His thoughts have not been soft for more than a decade; a year and half's kindness will not blunt their edges. What he knows of himself is this: he has always been stubborn. Wary. The prospect of being selfish is not one he has ever had the freedom to consider. _ _

__He should be out there with her, not in here with Cassandra and her oddly gentle silence._ _

__“Do you need me to stop their warding, Cullen?”_ _

__“No,” he laughs, a bitter draught in his mouth. “I am not so lost as to fear simple wards.”_ _

__The sparrow-larks are loud where the mages' circling is muted by cloth and spring-damp earth. As the pair passes behind the tents, Cullen catches Dorian humming an old Tevinter paean to the sea's black waves and bitter salt spume._ _

__“I did not mean to imply that you were, my friend.”_ _

__He doesn't want to be in this tent; he wants to be out there, with them. Or, he thinks he does._ _

__“Do they always speak in Tevene?”_ _

__Cassandra sighs, tucking her nails into her palms. “Do you remember my words to you in the hall, during Satinalia?”_ _

__“Which ones, Seeker?” Cold spills into his guts – the very last thing he wishes to hear is more Void-cursed words about lines, no matter how honest, or true._ _

__“She is a hard woman,” Cassandra replies. Something in the scrape of Cullen's voice makes her want to hunch in; Regalyan's name stretches out in the hollow of her chest. It is no easy thing to love a mage, even a dead one. “And I do not understand her half so well as I would like. It was the truth, Cullen. I do not understand her. She, her magic...”_ _

__“What?” he snaps. “Maker, Cassandra.”_ _

__“In the early days, none of us held our tongues in her company. We said unkind things of mages, of magic, and I am quite certain it soured her.” Magic has cost her blood, and Blood. And neither forgetting or forgiving appealed to her, not for many years._ _

__“You?” Cullen frowns. “All of you?” He is not sure where his anger is flowing from, but it springs up like red weeds in an ill-kept garden. If he is to make of Kirkwall a lesson, if he is to be better, then it seems he has failed spectacularly, before even beginning._ _

__Has she been hiding herself in plain sight? Under the sun? In the raucous laughter of the evening meal, in council sessions, in the tavern?_ _

__Why?_ _

__Cassandra tells herself it is not regret. “She and Dorian learned we were not to be trusted with their magic beyond combat. Most evenings, they go their way, and we go ours. I believe it is their way to train together, learn. They never bother with the common tongue. Always Tevene. When Solas accompanies us, it is much the same.”_ _

__Anger, livid and raw, breaks through his teeth and he snarls: “I thought you were her friends. All of you. I thought...”_ _

__She _hides_ herself._ _

__“If memory serves me, Commander, you were less than kind when she chose the mages.” Just over her shoulder she hears him breathe deep – a hard strike – and she is only a little sorry for it._ _

__“It has become rather apparent to me that none of us know how to talk to a mage without insulting them, slighting them.” Anthony, Regalyan, all that bitter, righteous anger she'd gathered in the years between. Shame, for loving a mage while hating what lived in his bones. Some days, her own hypocrisy is a heavy-handed thing to live under, but the measuring of injustices is a cold-blooded task, and she has little heart left for such a costly accounting._ _

__“Cassandra.”_ _

__Her grief is hers to keep, alongside her ghosts, her dead. The Maker had given her no body to honour, no flesh to wash, no eyes to close, no hands to wrap in linen across a still chest. Yet here, now, he is stretched out before her: a fragile shape beneath the shuttering of her eyelids; a cold memory she must breathe into, paint ruddy, living colours onto, prod into waking._ _

__“I loved a mage.” She breathes out, blinks, and salt washes out the crackling fire, the falling sun, the birds, the mages. “And despite our years together, he was much the same with me. He never trusted me to understand his magic. That part of him was never mine to have. Twenty years and I...”_ _

__Grief digs a hand between his ribs and Cullen lurches, reaching for Cassandra's shoulder. She spares only a moment for her own softness, before shrugging his compassion off with a flick of her shoulders._ _

__“I never had more than half. The only man I ever loved, burnt to ash with Most Holy, and I only ever had half.” The root of this confession is a mystery to her, but she suspects it is that she is not blind. And to believe that dour, worn-thin man she'd found in Kirkwall – little more than a hunched shape sat behind a too-large desk in the ruins of the Gallows – might want a mage is proof enough that there is more for her to learn._ _

__“I find I am weary of hurting those that I care for, and that I should not hold my suffering above theirs,” Cassandra says, the steel in her bones turned to water, and grieving. “If I had not spent so many years content to nurse my hatred for mages, I would have had more than...I would not have condemned our joy to the shadows. To stolen moments.”_ _

__“Cassandra,” he stumbles, flattened by the weight of her words. “I – I. Did he, did you? Maker.” All that talk of lines, and she had loved a mage in secret, in narrow spaces not meant for the sight of others._ _

__“Are you angry with me, Cullen?” His shocked bleat lands like a lash between her shoulder blades, and she hunches in, just a little._ _

__“Yes,” he sighs. “No. Never.”_ _

__The sun is gone, so are the mages, so are the sparrow-larks and their shivering wings._ _

__“I am sorry. Whatever comfort you might take from that, know that I grieve with you.” She likely does not want his comfort, or his words, but he gives them to her regardless. It is her choice to embrace them, or leave them as mere sentiment._ _

__The Maker has asked her to endure worse than the loss of a lover: mother and father gone, their blood fed to a roaring crowd; Anthony, headless in the snow; Lord Seeker Lambert choosing to play the coward, faithless and bitter in the last days of the White Spire. Yet she would give anything, anything to spend one more hour with Regalyan. Just one. To run her fingers through the silver at his temples, to hear his steady breath beside her in the warm dark. She would give whatever the Maker demanded of her._ _

__“Whatever is between yourself and the Inquisitor, Cullen, you cannot be as you were. You cannot be a templar in your heart, and then expect a mage to trust you whole. That is a disservice to you both.”_ _

__“I know.” Cullen bites down, tastes blood. “I know that.”_ _

__Cassandra sighs, pushes her hands flat against her thighs. Troubles replete in the world, and here she sits with another of the faithful, pulling up old bones as if the flesh that once housed them still bled._ _

__Cullen laughs – turned out raw by anger, disappointment, by his endless respect for all that is Cassandra Pentaghast. “Dorian says we are beasts. He tells me that the mages of the north, of Rivain, think southerners monstrous, ignorant.”_ _

__“Altus Pavus is a Tevinter mage, of course he would say such a thing.” She turns to the man she counts a friend, and finds a mirror in his downcast eyes._ _

__“But that does not make him wrong, Cassandra. What I allowed to happen in Kirkwall...” He swallows, digs deep. “Harrowed mages made Tranquil. The young ones, the pretty ones, they hid their bruises, trusted Orsino, ran to him for protection. I let that madwoman execute mages for reasons I cannot now recall. The more the lyrium goes, the easier it is to remember. None of it was right. None of it. Whatever I believe the Order should be, it was not that in Kirkwall.”_ _

__“Last we spoke of this, I was given to believe you still felt Meredith's measures necessary. Am I misinformed?” she questions, stern and thin-lipped._ _

__Cullen shrugs; his body aches as if he's been been worked over by a butcher's knife, all his joints hanging in their sockets by the thinnest of sinew. “She had her reasons, and I chose to believe in her without question. She talked of innocents, of our divine duty to protect mages from their own weakness. Meredith died truly believing in the righteousness of her actions.” His tongue drags along those last words, pressed down, pinched by their sour weight._ _

__“Righteousness.” He laughs. “What did any of us know of righteousness?”_ _

__“And now, now you do not think her justified?”_ _

__He snorts, shakes his head, memories rattling loud between his ears. “Once, I heard her say she sympathized with them, felt pity for them. Mages. Their curse made them wretched, and it was our sacred duty to guard all Thedas from this curse. I...”_ _

__“You wonder what our Inquisitor would say, should you tell her what you once believed?”_ _

__Cullen laughs and laughs and laughs. “I know what Mirèio would say.”_ _

__“Mirèio?” Cassandra sighs, bitterness and joy warring together in a ruin of futures she will never live._ _

__“Yes,” Cullen replies. “I will not be that man, Cassandra. I'll not be what you found in Kirkwall. I have wasted years of my life being a lesser man than what I thought I would be, and I am tired of being lesser, afraid. I am so tired of these lines, Cassandra.”_ _

__It had not been easy to lose faith in the stone surety that Meredith had set beneath his feet. It was had not been easy to step down, and walk away. On the bad days, her voice still echoes, and in the empty, dusty hours when the sun is high and the stones are hot, her hand still rests on his shoulder, and he still turns colder._ _

___If you cannot tell me another way, do not brand me a tyrant. Spare the mages? Give them freedom? And they would use it to tear down everything we hold dear.__ _

___I will be rewarded for what I have done, in this world and the next._ _ _

__“Cullen?”_ _

__“I do not know what I am doing, but I will try, regardless.” His knees are weak, stiff, but he clambers up, giving her shoulder one last, rough squeeze, and steps out into the night._ _

__The dark has come in, but in the distance he can see between trees: mage-light and shivering wings._ _

__Setting off at a measured pace, Cullen minds his steps, watching for roots as the forrest presses close – cold, heavy with the vital blush of spring – until he meets a warded ring in the dirt._ _

__As if through a watery veil, he can see the disjointed shapes of the mages behind the barrier separating them from the world. They do not see him for several moments, long enough for Cullen to learn the taste of the barrier's magic, and how its dusty, cobweb hum settles over his skin._ _

__Through the distortion he can see Mirèio standing beside Dorian. They are practicing movements. Or casting a spell. He cannot tell which._ _

__“Mirèio,” he calls, that damned burr back in his throat, and suddenly he is standing in the chapel, drowning in silence._ _

__“Cullen?” Her voice is cautious, the smile on her face hanging by glass threads – the slightest movement, and something vital will crack, fall away, and never be recovered._ _

__“May I?” he breathes; he does not trust himself to speak any louder._ _

___Ask, choose, decide.__ _

__“As you wish,” she murmurs, glass threads turning into a thin, tender grin._ _

__Cullen bites down on his laughter, on the fear he calls an old enemy; thinks of her yellow silk; her promise of other nights._ _

__Scuffing out a rune with her boot, she reaches out, bare fingers curling around his wrist. Cullen ducks his head, thoughts lingering in the sudden heat of her grip as she pulls him through the barrier, inch by careful inch. The magic washes over his skin, dragging up the little hairs on his arm, and his fear climbs up on spindle-sharp legs. Instead of letting those spindle legs walk all over him, he ties himself to the red reminders on his skin and the grip of her fingers, breathing through the discomfort._ _

__Above their heads the construct-birds flicker, their shapes drifting, breaking, falling like light on water, and for a moment it is as if the forrest has sunk under gentle waves and Cullen fears to drown._ _

__She points to the rock. Lets him go._ _

__“Well met, Commander,” Solas murmurs, brushing aside moss to offer a seat by his side. “This is quite the surprise.”_ _

__“Yes, I suppose it is.”_ _

__Solas waves a pale hand, his movements easy, languorous. “I had not considered that former templars would wish to keep company with quite so many apostates.”_ _

__“As there are no circles left standing, I should think that word has lost much of its power,” Cullen replies. He's always found the elf's words as colourful as the tale he is painting on the walls of the rotunda, and just as artfully planned._ _

__“Yes,” Solas murmurs, a pause held under his tongue, “perhaps by the next Age that will be true.”_ _

__Mirèio laughs. “A pity none of us will live to see it.”_ _

__“Indeed,” Solas smiles._ _

__Cullen feels a stranger in a strange land; they are all using the same tongue, but the words are splinters he must re-arrange the piece, fit them back together despite the bitter things lurking beneath._ _

__“Shall we carry on, ursa?” Dorian prods. “You did promise me a lesson about dirt quite some time ago. After all, you've got to keep me entertained until we can bully a few more Mortalitasi scrolls from that shady fellow in the Emporium.”_ _

__“Feet apart,” Mirèio barks around an indulgent grin. “Knees bent, eyes closed.”_ _

__“What are you doing?” leaves Cullen's mouth before he can think better of it._ _

__“Magic,” Dorian laughs, eyes falling shut._ _

__“Concentrate,” Mirèio hisses. “Arms up, hands out to the side. Remember, you are not taking, you are calling. Your hand is bowl, not a claw.”_ _

__“Rivaini magic,” Solas offers up, hands folded in his lap, “is a rare thing, so far from Dairsmuid.”_ _

__Cullen stills, breath running like water between his teeth._ _

__“Good,” the Bear murmurs, copper bands rattling in the silence. “Now stretch out, reach for the earth. It will be quiet, faint, but the song is there. Let it whisper to you.”_ _

__“What am I listening for?”_ _

__“Water is a clean glittering, its music is changeable, always shifting. The earth around it has a steadier tone, deep and dense. It is built of reverberations, echoes. Follow.” The last word is a distant noise, scattered as the susurus of gravel._ _

__Hands cupped, empty bowls waiting to be filled, the two mages drift, booted feet dragging through the dark, damp earth._ _

__“You are not your body,” is a lilting rasp: two stones pressed together by the weight of ages and dust. “You are your reach, the arrow that needs no string. You are the river-mouth, and your **self** runs where you will it.” _ _

__Solas laughs, mouth a gentler shape than before._ _

__Fifteen years has taught him the difference between a mage at rest, and a mage in action; Cullen can hear them both, taste them, their twining, their reaching. The pair flows over the dirt, searching, faces gentled, bare, eyes flickering beneath their lidded sockets._ _

__“Remember,” Mirèio breathes, hushed by the black earth in her bones. “Water is lightness seeking to rise. Reach down, scoop it up, call it. The earth will give just so. Let it tell you how.”_ _

__“Aha!” Dorian cheers. “There.”_ _

__“Gently,” Mirèio cautions._ _

__Reaching down, bodies flowing, rolling and receding, the mages seek. Curved hands touch the grass, and Cullen feels a great welling up and the air turns thick, burnt by a scent like lilac pulp withering under a white summer heat._ _

__The mages bend low, rise up; above his head the mage-lights chime, splinter, reform, and in their little throats is a song he does not know, a tune he cannot carry._ _

__Water shines between their hands, a little river rising up, up to drown out the lilacs and the fire and the salt._ _

__“There,” she chuckles, laughter clattering like beads on a string, “now even in the desert you will not want for water.”_ _

__The water rises, clean and cold, and Cullen cannot look away._ _

__“Excellent,” Dorian marvels, running his hands through before drinking deep. “Most useful. Minrathous gets so hot in the summer months you could reasonably choke a druffalo on the humidity in the air. I am practically dizzy with the applications. You lot from Dairsmuid have been keeping secrets. Simply unfair.”_ _

__Secrets indeed._ _

__“Again, I'm not Rivaini, and not exactly from Dairsmuid. This just happens to be the best thing the caravaners ever taught me,” Mirèio says as she bends down to wash the camp smoke from her face. She scoops great handfuls of water, heedless of it splashing against her mail. “Next,” she laughs, face slick and bright, “I'll teach you how to make the birds.”_ _

__Dorian claps her on the back, loops an arm around her broad shoulders, water droplets a merry rain on her forearm. “Cousin,” he smiles, “you are an excellent teacher, ne? No wonder all those noisy, sticky-handed creatures enjoy your lessons.”_ _

__“They are not all awful,” Mirèio grumbles. “A bit like herding cats, but I do not mind. Easier to teach than spoilt necromancers who seem to have an aversion to getting dirt under their nails.”_ _

__“Well,” Dorian sniffs, flicking water off his rings, “the next time you spend a whole season in the wilderness of the south with nothing but your pretty face and the clothes on your back, please do let me know how much you enjoy dirt after that. Do you know I once slept in this little, abandoned woodcutter's cottage? Frightful. Shared my blanket with the dormice. They were very polite about the whole affair.”_ _

__“Sheep-herder,” she laughs._ _

__Cullen blinks, feels the grit beneath his eyelids. This is what he'd hoped for, asked for in his own way, and had he remained in that tent, he would have had nothing of this moment. He would not have learned just how much of herself she hides._ _

__The magic is growing thin now, receding back into the earth alongside the water. Cullen tastes her retreat in his mouth, her power drawing inward until it is less than an echo. Dorian does the same, and he wonders if either of them would bother if he were not here. If either of them were in the company of their fellows, in the lands they called home, would they smother themselves so completely?_ _

__As before, he knows the answer._ _

__The barrier flickers, its hum turning shrill, and a vicious whiteness steals the sight from his eyes, lungs turned to red water in his chest. He falls. Slides between a crushing stone on his chest and a lightness in his limbs that threatens to send him face first into the dirt._ _

__His ears are ringing; the rest of him is empty._ _

__Voices bat at his ears, shapes that might be fingers passing over his eyes like shadows lit by candle flame, and he persists. Endures._ _

__Voices rise again, a word that might be _go_ echoing in a space he suspects is his own mind._ _

__Air. He needs air._ _

__The whiteness recedes._ _

__Cullen blinks, and Dorian is gone, a dim shape between the trees._ _

__“Dream well, lethalin,” Solas murmurs, the palm of his hand laid over his heart. His staff makes no noise against the ground, his loping gait too quite for the enclosing dark._ _

__Cullen blinks again; his neck is stiff, all his joints fused together as if he is some wretched golem waiting to be ground down by the ages he's yet to watch tramp by in silence._ _

__“Travel far, my friend,” Mirèio echoes, watching the elf's back until he is swallowed by the forrest. Cullen is an unmoving shape just over her shoulder, hands pressed flat to the stone beneath him._ _

__She settles beside him, all her limbs collected up in a perfect mime of courtesy; not even their thighs touch. “Where did you wander to, Cullen?”_ _

__“I don't know,” is a thin, bloodless sigh._ _

__“Why did you?” She tries, gropes blindly. Maker, but this is all so beyond her skill she feels a fumbling child. If she missteps, more than just the delicate tangling of their threads will be ruined. “Why would you subject yourself...”_ _

__A frown cuts the corners of his mouth. “I will not have you count me amongst those you cannot trust,” he speaks, hoarse and fraught with old fears. Anger crawls up from the pit of his chest to sharpen his tongue. “You will not do that to me.”_ _

__Mirèio jerks away as if struck. “Cullen.”_ _

__Her teeth are very white, and he can do nothing but watch as if he were stood outside himself. “You – I do not understand. How long have you been hiding? Why?” The last word is too rough in his mouth, too much._ _

___Later_ is the rope they will hang themselves by, that much he understands. _ _

__“Hiding?” She laughs. “You think I am hiding?” She leaves precisely no room in herself for gentleness._ _

__“How can I not? I thought they were your friends. I thought you trusted them, us. The Inquisition.” The moment he is finished, he knows he's said just the wrong thing, at just the wrong juncture. He's loosed an arrow and watched it fly home, push in deep. Her face closes up, neat as a roll of cloth, and his heart climbs into his throat, trembling._ _

__“Hold your tongue!”_ _

__His mouth snaps shut, and he is burning, burning and bitter._ _

__“I told you,” Mirèio punctuates, bare hands flashing, one dark, one green, under the wheeling sparrow-larks, “I have been hiding nearly all my life. Did you think it could be any different now? You southerners hate magic, hate mages. Maker's mighty Throne, Cullen, why should I share what is beautiful to me with people who think it marks me a sinner whole?”_ _

__She continues, palm flashing. “What did Halamshiral do but prove that, beyond a doubt!”_ _

___What I have done is protect you mages from your curse, and your own stupidity.__ _

__Cullen closes his eyes, and feels himself a great, crumbling ruin stretched over miles of black and Blighted earth._ _

__“Cassandra hates mages. Sera is so frightened of magic I'm confused as to why she continues to insist on accompanying me into the field...”_ _

__“Because she cares for you, as we all do,” he barks, scrambling for a hold, for some surety to cling to in the sudden disaster. “Surely you see that. How could you not?” There are more handspans between her shadow and his then there has been in more than a year. The realization is infuriating, turns him into something small and wretched._ _

__“And I do not doubt that care, I am not denying it,” Mirèio retorts, hands restless and mouth working over the glass in her mouth. “Joli, listen to me. Why would I share something rare and beautiful with those who think it a curse? Why should I, or Dorian, or Solas, be subjected to their scorn?”_ _

__“I – I do not...” he stumbles, and his fingers crush the moss beneath his hands. It's scent is dry and warm and infuriating. He wants to pluck the rock bare, hurls the soft little crumbs away until he's scraping his palms against the stone, until there is blood on his hands as real as his fears. “I do not think I can answer that. I do not know how to answer that.”_ _

__Her frame is bent, the river of her braids washing over her hands, her yellow silk, her sword. “What is my greatest joy, all that makes me whole, is a hateful thing in these lands. I – I do not...”_ _

__She has never stumbled before. Never. Never bit her tongue. Never leashed her words tight enough so that he can hear the chain rattle. To Cullen, the void in her words drags up something akin to naked terror. Maker, but he hates to hear how she bends herself, her words._ _

__“Mirèio.” For a reason he cannot now grasp, it is always her name, soft and pliant even when she is not. Perhaps it is because for a bare moment he is can be still, quiet._ _

__She turns to him, a mess of cold stone and cautious welcome. “Sí, joli?”_ _

__“I truly do not know what to say to you. My life, the life I chose.” Bravery is an easy thing to imagine, until it is necessary. More often than not, he was brave for the wrong reasons, for the wrong cause. “Nothing of that life is something I wish to inflict on you. It is ugly, Mirèio, and I know what I am.”_ _

__She opens her mouth but he pushes back, hands held out to ward off her unwanted denial._ _

__“But I do not want to be counted amongst those southerners you hide from. I do not want only half, Mirèio.”_ _

__Now that the words are gone, he feels empty, as if he's just spilled red guts onto his own knees. He should be afraid, there should be pain. “Please,” he murmurs, “let me try to be more.”_ _

__There is a cold little blade stuck between her ribs and if she pulls it out now, she bleed bloody ruin over the stone beneath her. “The man in that book, he would never have desired to say such a thing to a mage. You understand that, yes?”_ _

__Cullen smiles, swallows down the red ache, the grief. “Praise be to the Maker I am not that man.” His heart is a bird: a wet, limp thing barely clinging to a sodden branch. He breathes. He breathes and the noise in his head wars with the croaking of frogs and the low chirring of insects, the wailing of a fox._ _

__“Why do you believe you will get only half?”_ _

__The ache returns, fierce and greedy for his breath. He reaches out, gropes blindly for her hand. Her fingers close around his wrist, push under his glove to find the faded remnants of her marking. She presses down, rough fingers biting into his skin._ _

__“Joli?” he hears, distantly, the word far softer than her grip._ _

__“Forgive me I am so terrible at this,” he laughs, grieves. “I have not spoken of certain things in a long time.” Her fingers tighten round his wrist. “And I have spent ten years being the sort of man you would hate. I do not...I have so little to give you that is good. Undamaged.”_ _

__Her hot breath blows over his forehead but he pushes on, knocks her protest to the dirt, trampling it beneath his feet. It is true. Undeniable. She would have _loathed_ him. “But I have begun to learn that I cannot be afraid of magic anymore. I do not want to be. And yet I do not know how to...”_ _

__“Do you honestly think I see any clearer?” Her laughter burns, her face a cradle for quiet things so new, so frail, neither can touch them without the risk of damage. It's so easy to bruise young things._ _

__Cullen shrugs, a useless gesture, and she tugs at his shoulders, tucking his big body into the lee of her own; his hands find the warmth under her yellow silk, his breath hot against her neck. “I have not had cause to trust southerners since I was a child. I have not trusted southerners since I was a child.”_ _

__Cullen chokes on a sound that could easily become a sob, had he less pride._ _

__“Tell me what you want, Cullen.”_ _

__“You,” he breathes._ _

___All of you,_ lives in the narrow slice of air between their bodies. _ _

__“Hm,” she sighs. “I...”_ _

__“What is it like?” he murmurs, the heat of her skin warming his lips, oranges and bitter herbs skittering down to curl in the red valleys laid in between the white of his ribs. “What is it like, calling water in the desert?”_ _

__“Your bones turn to sand,” she says, a lilting hush in her mouth. “The sky hangs above you and you are large enough to brace it on your shoulders, you are every little heart beating under the sun, every mouth seeking relief. You are the echo of feet and hooves and claws against sand, and when the water finally meets you, you are that too: cold and clean and good.”_ _

__He laughs, a thin veneer laid over an old, well-worn grief. Andraste's mercy, he would give more than was his to rightfully give to feel that: clean, and good. “The places you have been, my lady. I should wonder how you are satisfied with the south.”_ _

__“I am not.”_ _

__Cullen flinches._ _

__“But,” she murmurs, rolling up the stiff leather of Cullen's glove to expose the cradle of his pulse. His veins are blue, fragile beneath nearly translucent flesh; her teeth could scrape them out, find their source, make his blood red as the skin on his cheeks. “I find there is much in the south I could be satisfied with.”_ _

__“Oh?” he breathes, watching the hook of her nose descend. His other hand is not steady, but he wants to touch her mouth, run his finger along her softer edges just before her teeth meet his skin._ _

__The dark curtain of her hair hisses over his breeches, his knees, and she lifts his hand, his wrist. Her breath is cold, her mouth hot, her tongue red steel, and when she bites down the prick of her teeth snatches at his breath, twists it high._ _

__When she mouths _joli_ against the red half moons left by her teeth, Cullen reads the words of her canso beneath his eyelids, hears parchment crackle and knows what it is to be that sparrow struck through, wings forgotten, falling under the sun's white arrows. _ _

__It is madness to try; the chasm between them is wide and deep beyond measure, but he wants what he wants._ _

__As does she._ _

__“Whatever truth there is in knowing we would have hated one another,” Mirèio says, pressing her words against Cullen's skin as if in some blind hope he will carry each one with him when he goes to his rest, “you came without your armour. You walked blindly into a dark forrest, towards three mages, without a sword at your hip.”_ _

___Without lyrium,_ she keeps to herself_ _

__“And you let me in,” he cajoles. “By rights you should not have, not with my history.” He pushes the words out, finds uglier ones beneath, discards them. He wants better._ _

__“I never did apologize to you over my words when the mages first joined us. You were right. There were no abominations.”_ _

__“Stubborn,” she laughs, kissing the reddening moons on his skin. “Take the compliment, joli. Be satisfied.” Setting his wrist down, she examines the little welts of her teeth against the little rivers of his veins. He is a mess of contradictions: soft and yet fierce; brave and yet terribly afraid; kind beyond measure, yet saving none for himself._ _

__Wordlessly, Cullen offers up the other and her heart presses against her ribs, red and shivering and too much for her chest. She knows only panic: too much; too soon; too sweet._ _

__She marks him again, holding the flat of her tongue to his skin until he laughs, pulling away to beg a kiss rather than her teeth._ _

__“Come,” Mirèio says between her nipping at Cullen's lower lip, “we should return before my little band of disorganized ruffians begins to worry. I've had enough of their whispering for one night.”_ _

__“Must we?” Cullen sighs, chasing the dart of Mirèio's tongue._ _

__Sliding off the rock, she holds her hand out. “Come on, joli. Back we go.”_ _

__“But we will talk about Halamshiral, Mirèio.” Her mouth is a distraction all its own, but he's grown wise to how she uses it, and why._ _

__“Like a dog with a bone,” she huffs, devoid of any real rancour._ _

__“I am Fereldan, you know.”_ _

__“I haven't forgotten, joli.”_ _

__Her hand becomes her arm, and Cullen allows himself to be lead out of the woods, the flock of sparrow larks rustling, wheeling overhead, outlining their boots amongst the gnarled roots. This time, the silence is gentle, thin, easily set aside._ _

__The low, red mouth of the camp fire shines between the trees, free of silhouettes._ _

__“Have they all gone to sleep?” Cullen laughs. “Why are we never this lucky in the morning?” Beside him, Mirèio shrugs, leaning down to nip at his ear._ _

__“Does it matter?”_ _

__Cullen never gets the chance to answer._ _

__“I'll kill you!”_ _

__Mirèio freezes. Under the circle of light cast by her birds, Cullen can see her mouth shape: _Cassandra?__ _

__“You vile, loathsome little dwarf! You lied to me! To us.”_ _

__Standing not ten paces from the fire, Cassandra has Varric by the collar, her red face inches from his. Her grip flexes and she shakes him, as if hoping to knock something loose._ _

__“What in Andraste's Holy fucking Blood is going on here?” Mirèio thunders, stepping away from Cullen to drive the birds and the light up over the squabbling pair. The light grows until the neat circle of tents is bared, Cassandra and Varric in the midst._ _

__“What are you on about, Cassandra?”_ _

__Pulling himself free from Cassandra's grasp, Varric spends a moment primly smoothing down his rumpled shirt._ _

__“Bristles,” he starts, a tired drawl hiding under his tongue, “there's someone I'd like you to meet.”_ _

__“You always were one for dramatic introductions, Varric,” a deep, quick-silver voice laughs. “I'm always pleasantly surprised. It's good to see that hasn't changed, eh old friend?”_ _

__Reaching up to lower the hood covering his face, the man extends a hand to Mirèio._ _

__“Inquisitor. Varric has told me so much about you.”_ _

__“Hawke,” Cullen breathes._ _

__~ * ~_ _


	20. I feed me in sorrow and laugh in all my pain;

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> So, I feel like I should be upfront with all you wonderful readers. I'm sorry this has taken so long, but the Dragon Age fandom has been a challenge for me lately, and when you're writing against the grain it's hard to want to keep going. I've picked up some new readers and lost some on the way, and that's okay. That being said, I owe it to you all to say that this chapter is rough. If you're sensitive to having Cullen's actions brought up in a negative light, you may want to skip this. 
> 
> Again, thank you all so much for sticking with me, for leaving me comments, criticism, kudos. If you want to leave me more criticism, I cannot express how much I would appreciate that. It keeps me sharp.

~ * ~

Strung high above the crackling mouth of the fire, one bone-chip moon sets a bitter eye over their heads, its sister hanging like a fat red torch under the other's white face. Together, they drown the world in an unkind light, flinging shadows out in long, black lines.

Hawke straightens, unwinding taller and taller, flickering between beats of firelight. “Who said my name?”

Cullen concedes a single step, slipping an inch back into the forgiving dark beyond the fire-pit; the construct-birds still reel above their heads, their little throats piping mournfully, their little claws searching out absent branches. Mirèio is an arms-length in front of him, the broad dark of her back gifting him a generous shadow to linger in. Coward isn't a name he wears easily, but the only thought in his mind is: _Not now. Not without my sword._

Hawke has a memory far longer than his teeth. 

“I have only met you through a half-read book, Champion.” Mirèio bows low, tongue neat between her lips. “It is an honour to finally put a face to the name.” When he takes her offered hand, his grip is a vice, crushing. It's a struggle to keep herself stone-faced.

Cullen snaps his teeth down, a hot needle digging into his jaw, bones grinding hard enough to sever the bleat of surprise lodged in his throat. _Only half? Just half? Maker, I never thought to ask her. Never._ And suddenly the dark behind her back is quick to make itself the dearest friend he's ever had. 

“The name, eh?” Hawke chuckles. He turns to Varric, trying on a rueful little grin. “Seems I'm cursed to wear it round my neck forever. Quite the albatross, that.” 

“Don't give me that look,” Varric protests, inching away from Cassandra's long, stooped vulture-shadow. “We both knew how popular that book was going to be.”

“You promised you'd write it badly.” Hawke drags a big hand down his face, grumbling as if he's stuffed gravel his mouth. “Dear Hawke, don't worry – no one will read this shit, I promise. I still have your letter somewhere, friend. You swore you'd leave out all the good bits! No heroics. No nonsense.”

“I did write it badly!” Helpfully, purposefully, Varric does not say: _I lied through my teeth for you._ That's for later, when things are quieter and they are alone. 

“Enough!” Cassandra bellows, raising her hand to jab at Varric's chest as if looking for a patch of dirt to pin him down into. “You and I, dwarf, have much to discuss when we return to Skyhold. This is not over, and you will answer for your lies.”

Eyes flinty narrow cuts in the red dark, Varric bares his teeth. “Lies? I never lied to you, Seeker. I told you: I didn't know where Hawke was. You never asked me to tell you if I could reach him.”

Cassandra's face colours, blood purpling her cheeks. “You insufferable little sophist! I told you we needed Hawke. That we needed someone who could lead. You knew our cause. You knew why we needed the Champion. And you lied!” 

“Cassandra,” Cullen hisses, watching as her fingers creep towards her sword-hilt. If she draws her sword, they are all lost. “Cassandra, stop this.”

Hawke's eyes lift up, sharp and dark, whetted to hooks by the firelight. “Who's there?”

He's always made a poor coward; the white rise of Mirèio's collar passes at the edge of his sight like a cliff face as he steps forward, palms up, into the ring of light. “This is neither the time nor the place to argue. Whatever Varric's reasons were for keeping Hawke's location from you, we cannot go brawling outside our men's tents like children.” Hawke turns those hook-like eyes out into the dark, to Cullen's own red-wrapped shadow. 

“Champion,” Cullen nods, feeling his neck dog-caught in a collar of white finger bones. Three years, and he hasn't forgotten a moment of what it's like to ride that stare, or see those teeth. He'll be damned if he gives the bastard the thinnest inch to read him by. 

The air flees, running out to buzz with the insect noise beyond the fire's wavering circle. 

“You.” Hawke shifts, shoulders bunching. 

“Yes,” Cullen replies, chin up, swordless. “Me.”

“You!” is the crack of a bolt thudding into ribs: a red, meaty thwack of a sound. “What in the fucking Void are you doing here, Knight-Commander?” Hawke snarls, spitting into the dirt. “Last I saw you, you were standing in the rubble sucking your own blood off your teeth.” Leaning forward, fingers ticking over the hilt at his hip, he sneers, “Good to know that mouth healed so poorly.”

“I find it healed just fine, Champion. Thank you for your concern.” Cassandra looks to him, eyes wide, all her rage upended in a frown. Cullen shakes his head, one hand wandering up to trace the white line over the edge of his mouth. That title. That Blighted fucking title. Always stuck to his back, it seems. 

“The Champion gave you that scar?”

Before Cullen can answer, Hawke bares his teeth, grinning. “Call it a parting gift, for my sister.”

“Lady Bethany came willingly,” Cullen replies. “I'll thank you not to rewrite history.” 

“History?” Snarling, more wolf than dog, Hawke reaches down. Plucks the dagger from his belt. Even in the red light, the blade shines a gleaning, wicked blue. “If it were history, I would have brought Bethany and the remains of the Circle to Skyhold, like Varric suggested.” Leaning out over the stuttering fire, Hawke sneers. “But – ”

“You have the last of Kirkwall's Circle? You?” Cullen steps forward, jabbing at the hollow between Hawke's ribs.

“Yes!” Hawke jabs back, his shadow flung over Cullen's eyes. “Did you think they were dead? Did you think they all disappeared in the middle of the night to dance naked under the moon and make themselves abominations in some petty display of vengeance?”

“Of course not! I thought they ran, or were captured. I...”

“We all know how well you cared for your charges, Knight-Captain. Don't put on your shock now, three years too late. I'm sure it was much easier to think the wilds had finished them, eh? Beat a dog long enough and it'll snap at its own leg, right? Let them eat themselves, so long as it's not in front of you.” 

“How dare you – you know nothing!” he bellows, moving out from the shadows to hurl himself over the fire, heedless of his soft shirt, his still-marked skin, his swordless hands. “Do not pretend you knew anything of what was in my mind when the Gallows fell. Do not speak as if you did. Do not speak as if you ever knew a damn, Void-forsaken thing about me, Hawke.” There is a red itch in his chest, red teeth. Every part of him feels burnt, stung as if his skin has shrunk into his bones – blackened by rage, gnawed by ghosts.

“Ha! You made yourself clear enough to me for seven years, Knight-Captain.”

As if all sound is being forced through the narrowest eyelet, Cullen hears his name. His name and Hawke's. It must be Cassandra. Or Mirèio. Both. The noise sinks under the red, tide-like bellowing in his head, and all he can see is Hawke's white teeth, his dagger sharp enough to part skin from bone like it was breath from lungs. 

“I'll say whatever I like, templar dog.”

“Hawke.” Varric berates, pleading. “Hawke enough!”

Before Hawke's cold blue can find Cullen's hot red, there are hands on his back, at his shoulders; Cassandra's sword reaching over the fire-pit; her voice throttling the blood pounding in his ears. Maker but he wants to bloody Hawke's mouth, break that jackal-leer on the back of his hand. Instead he spits, roars, “That is not my title! I am no templar!” he punctuates, hands flashing over the fire. “Not anymore.” 

Knocking the hands away, he lunges towards the man, eager to redden Hawke's neat teeth. The only thing in his mind is the singular image of his nightmare: that shadow within a shadow caught beneath the ruined spear of Kirkwall's mage tower. “I chose to stand with you against my Knight-Commander. And the last of my templars burned themselves to ash to pull your city out of the fire after **you** abandoned it. Don't come here with that word in your mouth, and pretend you have any right to speak to me like that, Champion.”

Hawke goes still, and the insect noise floods back in like a tide: high and white and roaring. Like a quiet hunter pressed low to the ground, he lifts his chin. “I did not abandon Kirkwall. I took what little family that greedy, Maker-forsaken blood-pit left to me and ran, Knight-Captain. So did you.”

“Andraste's fucking Mercy, that is not my title,” he spits. At his ear he hears Mirèio bellow: “Stand down, both of you!” The smell of loamy earth and fire burns his nose, curdles his lungs. He jerks away, swaying, an oath caught between his teeth. He does not see Her, but rotted, too-sweet stink of old blood rises up to stick its fingers in his mouth.

“Step away now, Messere Hawke, or I will move you myself.” 

Is it her hand on his shoulders? Is that the other at his back, fisted tight in his shirt? He knows her hands by now, even in utter darkness. 

When the tug comes, it thuds through him hard enough to band his lungs tight, send teeth rattling together. 

“Stop,” she hisses.

He cannot see her face, and all he has to build her expression around is the low, tight nettle of her voice in his ear. He needn't see to know her taloned eyes; the neatly sharp row of her teeth; the star in her hand, burning at his back. 

“Come away.” _Joli_ hangs on the tip of her tongue like nectar. That pushes on his shoulders, wiggles down his spine to bury itself softly, softly, in the small of his back, and make of him a red nest. “Listen to me, Cullen. Come away.”

Some shift in the wind or in the bones of his wrist must give Hawke away, because Varric throws himself between his friend and the others: a sudden, sturdy blot bracketed by fire. Back turned to Cullen, hands spread out, he shouts, “Enough. Fucking Andraste's ass, Hawke, you're not doing yourself any favours here. Just stop. You need their help. You need the Inquisitor's help.” A quick glance over his shoulder. “And she'll have your head if you put a hole in her General.”

Hawke glares, sour-eyed, sucking at his teeth. “General?” he laughs, as if he cannot connect the word and the man together. “You're joking, right?” 

“Hawke.”

“Alright, alright, my friend. I suppose we can continue our little conversation later, Knight-Captain.”

“No,” Cullen snaps, hands cutting through the air, “we will not, Messere.”

Hawke laughs, slips his dagger back into its leather cradle. “So says you.”

Cassandra's vulture-stoop returns, covering Varric in darkness. “You have a great deal of explaining to do, dwarf. What a farce this is.” Her hands fly up, raptors in flight, before settling back down again. “This is beyond inexcusable, even for you. You mock my trust.”

“That's a lie and you know it,” Varric interrupts, heedless of the shadow draped over his shoulders.

“I do no such thing,” Cassandra snaps. “You go too far, Deshyr.” Turning to the Champion, she does not offer her hand, as before. “This has been an inauspicious first meeting, Messere.”

Before she can say aught else, Hawke replies with that same barking laugh: “Did you read Varric's book, Seeker? This is rather typical.”

She flings a noise not unlike disgust at his feet before whirling away, taking her hot, heavy anger with her like a wind.

“Varric,” Mirèio says, staring down at the dwarf, unblinking. Slowly, she overtakes Cullen until he is back to where he started – behind the broad, dark lee of her back. Turning would give her away, so she settles for a meagre glance out the corner of her eye. All his colour has fled, the necklace of her teeth-marks flaring vivd and vicious against his white skin.

“Bristles.” Varric takes a minute to remind himself: he gave her that name for a reason. 

She wants to tell him to keep his dog on a tighter leash, but all the fight has been gutted out of her, eaten up by the white, bloodless pallor of Cullen's face. “You go first,” she whispers, jerking her head out towards the dark. Cullen frowns hard, a retort lurking in the sour bend of his mouth.

“Please.”

The please is enough. 

With a thought, she sends her birds up. They are no match for the stars, but she trusts them to keep his path clear. She watches him go: a deer, luminous, fleeing into the dark. Her birds follow. 

Alone with the echos and the insects, Mirèio can think of only one thing to say that will not lead to more screaming. “If you have mages in need, Messere, I offer my protection.”

Hawke regards the obscenely tall woman stood before him for a long sword-measure of a moment. “Forgive me, Inquisitor, but I'm not sure that's wise. You do not know the Knight-Captain as I do. If the Inquisition has any surviving Gallows templars,” he pauses as if weighing words, measuring their length, their capacity to wound, “then I can't – in all good conscience, knowing what I know – bring the mages, or what's left of my family to Skyhold. I hope you understand.”

It is no smile that touches her eyes. “I did not offer you and yours the protection of the Inquisition.”

Wind moves the fire, the snap of flames loud in the silence.

“I offered mine.”

With a dry puff of air, Varric throws back his head and laughs, and laughs, and laughs. “Bristles,” he says, as if passing secrets through keyholes.

Hawke looks from his friend to this unknown, wolf-mouthed stranger. “Am I missing something? I feel like I'm missing something important.”

“Do you know what they called me before they strung both Herald and Inquisitor around **my** neck, Champion?”

“No.” Hawke laughs. Her echo is not lost on him. “But speaking from experience, I'll wager you liked that name more.”

“They called me the Bear.” Between her ears the sound of her mother's cane tapping against stone rises up, up with her father's boiling laughter; her brother's little hand slips into hers, his fingers caked in clay and paint. _Sister, sister I made you this. Take her with you, and..._ “The Great Bear of Ostwick.” Hands spread, night resting between her palms, she laughs. “They still call me that.”

Stepping around the fire, Hawke thrusts his hand out, a thunder-hearted grin clapped over his face from ear to ear. “Well met, Bear.” 

“Hawke,” she replies, taking the man's offered hand. He has long fingers, fine bones. It seems to her that he could have been something less cruel, with hands like those. “I am certain we have much to discuss, but – a word of warning.”

The man stills; he is as tall as she is, and it is no trouble at all to see: it is his eyes that kept him _Hawke_. He has raptor-wide eyes, like a black shadow stalking through a peerless sky.

“Whatever ugliness there is between you and Commander Rutherford, if you cannot keep your daggers in their belt, keep your distance. This is not a request. It has been three years, and much has changed in your absence.”

A little noise leaves him – quicker and brighter than a match-flare – and Hawke tilts his head, the cliff of his shoulder rising up. “Respectfully, Inquisitor, but you wouldn't say that if you knew the whole story.”

A thin string of clouds scuttle across the white moon and its red sister above. For a moment, only the fire speaks. Tongue loosened from its perch behind her teeth, Mirèio stares at the stranger stood before the fire, his hunting eyes and his fine hands. His face tells her little. His unbent neck tells her _warrior_. That is a familiar shape; a known entity. And yet – her voice rises up gruff and arrow-sharp, “I read enough to be satisfied.”

Hawke laughs the same barking retort as before. “Did you get to the end of the book?”

Mirèio stills, wipes her face clean. “No.”

The moon peels free of its cloud-veil, its light falling harder and heavier than before. Grinning, Hawke shifts, once more the angry, ink-scribble of a man. “You should finish. Never mind the beginning, or the middle, that was Varric being polite. The end is a little more honest.” The woman stood in front of him has a gaze the exact colour of a storm-broken sea. And here, knowing nothing of her but Varric's words, it's easy to pretend the Herald of Andraste is someone else. Perhaps the Inquisition is keeping her under a dust cover somewhere, for when a statue is more useful than this tired-eyed scrap of flesh-and-blood.

“Hawke,” Varric warns. “This is getting us nowhere.”

“Now now,” Hawke chides, still that angry scribble of a man. “I'm just trying to get the Inquisitor to understand. You really were more honest at the end, my friend.”

Varric huffs, leather gloves squeaking as he clenches his fists – the quill in his head is scratching out whole fields of words, red ink cutting through his pretty turns of phrase like scythes through winter wheat – and unclenches, fingers tingling. “Never been good with endings. Guess I got it right that time.” Mirèio's eyes land on him and he almost feels a beak on his cheek, tearing; he holds under the sharpness; she isn't Stone, and he's had worse. 

The fire twists, running out like a red tide towards the Inquisitor's knees. If she called it, there's no templar near to tell. 

“Regardless,” Mirèio barks, braced by the charcoal soft dark beyond the firelight, “I ask, for the sake of peace, that you keep your distance. There is too much at risk for infighting, and we need your help to find the Wardens.”

Hawke nods, hunting eyes empty of intent. She cannot help but wonder whether or not he would consider her words a command, or a request, or less than dirt. His face does not wear answer enough to judge.

Turning, she leaves the pair to their little, fire-warmed circle. What reunion they need is not her business, but Varric's stretched up arms and Hawke's stooped back are loud enough.

~ 

Varric waits until he can't hear anything but the fire. And then he finds the star-shaken sky again, chin digging into Hawke's shoulder. For a moment, he allows himself to be thankful for the wrong things, for unhappy reasons. He's never loved the Stone, but permanence...

_Well, we can't always get what we want,_ he reminds himself.

They separate, and it's like slitting stems from thorns with the edge of a nail. 

Breathing like a druffalo, he knocks his fists into Hawke's solar plexus. “Asshole. I bring you good Antivan brandy and you ruin my night. Is this because you've spent too much time in the woods with Blondie and Sunshine? Why does no one ever listen to me when I tell them it's a bad idea to dance naked under the moonlight for too long? Daisy never listened, and look what...”

“Varric,” Hawke interrupts. “It's _our_ night, and the sun's not up yet, my friend. Take me to this brandy of yours.” A great gust of air leave him and he shrinks, folded in two by some unseen weight. To the ground he says, “Forgive me. I'm tired, my friend, and I've missed your stories.”

“Me too,” Varric sighs, offering a hand. 

“Thank you.” Hawke coughs up a laugh, wet-eyed. “As always.”

Varric laughs, looking back down from the empty, moon-ridden sky to the dirt. “Sure thing, Hawke.”

~

The farther away she gets from the fire, the more the grass clings to her ankles. The day's vanished heat has turned the earth damp, the air thick enough to stick to her skin, clog up her lungs. She takes a breath, long and empty, before stepping deeper into the dark. 

Swaddled in darkness, with only her footsteps for company, her thoughts grow disobedient, clamouring. In her head is a white sleeve. She waits for it to breach the ring of the candle-light beneath her eyelids. She waits for the sleeve, the hand, her mother's ring. Here, in this half-dark, her mother's hand is writing letters, old Urian's brindled snout laid over her feet, the sun at her shoulders, the sea in her ear. 

_Your letters have been terse of late, little bear. You've never been so silent with me. What has gone wrong? What troubles you? Alexandre has begun another project. He is anxious, and lonesome. Perhaps he thinks that if he covers himself in plaster dust, I will not notice? And your father sleeps like an owl – one eye on the port road, even in the dark. Do you remember that second year we sent you to Rivain? You were finally old enough to return to us, and still we had to send you away. Once I thought half a year too long. Now I am regretful of such a thought. Two years, my daughter. Two years too long._

The sleeve and its gold-washed hand retreats, and it is hard to go back to a night empty of waves and ocean salt. To the particular hart she is hunting for through the wet grass – though even now she does not believe him fled. Cullen is not a man so easily cowed.

Following the echo of wings, it doesn't take her more than a handful of moments to find the blue-white host of her birds, their light spilling soft against the dew-threaded grass. She finds him stood in their midst, breathing in the heavy warm dark. The line of his shoulders is proud, firm. If he is wearing his old skin dragged up from the City of Chains she would not know.

“Cullen?”

Above their heads her birds chime – an old greeting she'd sewn into them when they were young and she'd struggled to keep them birds, a little sentimentality she won't unstitch – and Cullen tries on a smile. It fits poorly: his face a creased and weighted study in walking through familiar ruins. 

She tilts her head, gaze sliding down his face to rest on his faintly trembling hands. “Cullen.”

His hands rise up, and sink down again. There's no blood in his cheeks, there's no blood anywhere in him. Just an absence. An emptiness he can't fill. He tries again, but his face is cold wax, and his lips twist, pulled thin by grief. “I hadn't thought to see that man again. Truly, I thought he would prefer – I thought he and the apostate...” He sucks in a breath, and Halamshiral's chapel flies into his eyes: the hammer in her hand, its green smoke on the lurid red carpet, all those voices crying out, blood on their jaws. He reads the twist in her mouth, and the tight lines around her eyes. “Ah, I should have found another word.”

Mirèio shrugs, the word rolling like water down her back. “I have no feelings on the subject of Anders, but Hawke – that man seems to hate you very much.”

“Hawke and I have a long history, and there's little I can do about it. After Meredith and her lunacy, I daresay it's his right.” 

Mirèio chokes out a laugh. “What? That is a wretched thing to say.”

Cullen grimaces, the wax around his mouth bending a little. It does not pass for a smirk. “Not if it is the truth, Mirèio. You were not there. You didn't see – I did not acquit myself well. And Hawke saw only the worst of what the Order had to offer. Good men often react as he did.”

“Good is too kind, I think.”

“No,” Cullen sighs, voice as bloodless as his face. “I assure you, Hawke is a good man, so long as he counts you his Blood. If he counts you family, that man would spit the Maker's eye if you asked it of him.”

She considers his casual blasphemy for a moment; considers his trembling hands; his cold mouth. 

Cullen meets her eyes and does not look away, struggling not to read rebuke in the arm's length separating them. He wants to have her closer, her smell under his nose, her shoulders under his hands. But she gives him more words instead. The opposite of what he wants from her. 

“How do you know so much of a man who would clearly relish opening your throat with his fucking teeth?”

Cullen laughs: an ugly sound welling up. “I had his sister, remember. For five long years.”

“I read your letters quite thoroughly, Cullen. You never hurt the girl.”

“No,” he says, sour and tight. “No I didn't. But that doesn't matter. I left her alone. I ignored her. I...” The words tremble on his tongue, fledgling-awkward, and just as naked. “I might as well have left her to wolves.”

Mirèio steps closer, the arm-length between them dwindling.

“There was a knight-lieutenant in the Gallows, Alrik. He – he terrorized the younger mages. The pretty ones. And Orsino could only do so much. I don't know if Alrik and his like ensured the mages' formal complaints never crossed my desk. Or if I ignored them. Or if they...if the mages truly thought I was no better, and so never came to me for help. But I never saw. I chose not to see.”

“Cullen.”

“Hawke knew that. He knew about Alrik, and Karras. And so many others.” The walls are high, and his fingertips are bloody, but he goes on – the clear sky in his mind a few inches closer. “So of course he hates me. He has many reasons to hate me.”

_Mages cannot be treated like people. They are not like you and me, Hawke._

The words curdle his tongue, turn him out raw. _I can't tell her now. Not here. Not when she can take what I said back to her tent. Go to sleep with it in her ears. No._ He shakes his head as if to dislodge his thoughts, and send them rattling into disarray and silence. 

“I should have done more. Not been so blind. Listened.” Laughter cracks out of his mouth; he covers his eyes, shuttering the birds and their sea-like light. “Instead I waited until my Knight-Commander was literally stark raving mad, and half the mages were already dead. Maker, she was like a rabid dog, biting at everything that moved – the mages, her own knights.” At some point, all the space between them had evaporated, and under his nose is her smell; her steadily beating heart. She reaches out, wraps her hands around his arms tight. “Joli.”

“I never thought to ask if you'd finished.” It's only now that she's so close that he realizes how cold he is. Cold and empty and furious. “Why did you not?”

Mirèio stares down at Cullen, at the furrows lining his face, and the purple shadows under his eyes. “Does it matter so much to you?”

“Yes,” Cullen croaks. He dares a little, and leans in. Her hands slide around him and he bites the tip of his tongue grateful, for once, to taste blood. Better than the naked noise trembling in his throat.

Mirèio heaves a sigh, turning her cheek until she can breath him in. “In all honesty, I felt like a voyeur. Like some awful little goblin sitting in a dark corner, watching things I had no right to watch. I knew nothing of Hawke, or you, or anyone in that book.” She laughs, but it's limp as a cloudy-eyed fish. “And whatever Varric thinks about his writing, he's good at making his people seem very real. I felt like I was watching a man I hardly knew suffer terribly for my entertainment. And I –”

“Tell me,” he snaps, harsher than he intends.

Preemptively, as if to ward off a blow, she pulls him closer. A few scant inches that amount to little, and yet so much. “I told you in the greenhouse, joli.” Cullen sags, just an inch, tucking in a little further. She breathes out: long and deep and rattling. “I found it difficult to reconcile the man I was getting to know, and the man in that book. The more I read, the more time I spent in your company – I couldn't...I still find it difficult.” 

Some bitter, snarling, too-hot _thing_ in his chest wants him to bring his fists up, wants to push her away, demand answers. Punishment. Honesty. Anything, anything to stop the little voice in the darkest corner of his brain that croons to him: _She'll hate you once she knows._

But he's more fool than coward, always has been.

“Mirèio.” He swallows, feeling the plank beneath his feet and the rope around his neck. “Is that why you rarely ask of Kirkwall? Are you afraid of my answer?” He says the words to her chest, to the sudden thump of her heart beating beneath his ear.

A moment passes, and then another. And another. Until Cullen shifts and they peel apart. Her hands stay on his elbows. His face stays tilted towards hers. Under the blue, lace-like wings all her gentleness seems flown, and her eyes far away. As if she is watching something – someone she doesn't understand. 

“No.”

“No? I hardly believe that.” Cullen forces out the words, anger stoking the bellows of his lungs.

Exhaustion weighs on her. She holds it in her mouth like a cherry-stone, sighing. “Do you truly want to do this now, in the dark, in the middle of our camp?” Some inch-high part of her knows that this is long over due. That she can only dance around him and his shadows for a little while longer. That their singular conversation in her chambers on the Wild Night will not suffice to bury all that lies between them, for all that he seems determined to dig it all up.

“You truly have been spending too much time with Orlesians if you think to use that as an excuse,” Cullen snaps, breaking her hold on his elbows. “Can you not understand why I need you hear these things? Can you not understand why I need you to listen?”

“Joli,” she pleads, “why? I have no good answer for you.” It is cruel and she knows it, in a bone-deep, heart-sore way.

“I don't care!” he bellows. “Damn your good answers. You know – you know not everything can be good. How can it, with history like ours?”

“I – Maker, Cullen.” Frozen, she parcels out all her words into careful, manageable pawns she can shuffle around some imagined board in her head. She looks away, out into the dark. It would be so easy to reach for that place in her made sharp and hard by years of being only half herself. Easy to go back to keeping a heart she could put up off a shelf with the dust each spring, when the sea was raw and her flocks were white and teeming, in more need of tending than that half of herself she'd put away. And she could put that red, soft muscle away again, and wait out the bleeding until winter returned and she could go flying back to herself, whole. 

Cullen pushes on, determined. Even if it puts her on the ground, on her ass in the dirt, she needs to listen. Every part of him has waxed hot. Sharp. Urgent. “This isn't.” He stops. Turns the thought over in his hands, caught up the side of the head by revelation. “This isn't like our desires. You cannot just...”

A discreet cough knocks the rest of Cullen's words out of his mouth, even as the sound sends him leaping out of his skin as if scalded. 

“If you are aiming for discretion, my friends, you are failing miserably. And loudly,” Dorian interrupts, glaring at the pair from under the bunching of his eyebrows. “I should also point out that neither of you are best served by dramatics. I'm afraid that is my domain, not yours.”

“Dorian.” Cullen doesn't intend for the man's name to sound like a curse, but it does. Mirèio has slipped the snare already; she might as well be racing headlong for the obscuring underbrush, though she is standing right in front of him. 

“No need for thanks,” he waves, turning out of the trembling ring of light, “just get some rest. You can argue in the morning, like sensible people. Give me a bird, ursa. I'd rather not stumble back the way I came.”

A bird alights, coming to rest on Dorian's finger. “My thanks,” he murmurs with a neat half-bow. “Do try not to take too long.”

Mirèio watches him go – her bird hopping from finger to finger, its little song clear in its little throat – wrestling with shadows, and the ghost of a man she has no desire to know.

“Mirèio, we cannot ignore this. We must speak, and soon,” Cullen says, sounding for all the world like he's been dragged a red mile by an animal he knows all too well. 

A white-hot fist grips at her heart, squeezing, expanding, and then falling quiet. She straps it down with string, and _later_ , and _you knew this was coming_. “As you wish,” is her quiet, bare-faced reply. “I will still be here in the morning.”

That Blighted red arrow pushes through him again, and Cullen nearly bows, gored clean through by a singular memory. His gaze falls to the dirt, even while his hands hold the words near, examining them, pulling them apart to lift their misplaced sweetness to his lips. That desert he crossed returns in full, all its vast and empty years pressing in on him, reminding him: he has come to water, and he can drink. There's nothing stopping him.

Only, before he can say anything, her breath breaks over his cheek as she leans down, tucking her fingers under his chin to lift his face up. Surprise runs through him, setting him alight. His breath deserts him; his heart thuds against his ribs, too big for his white bones. The first brush of her against him is like wings, like a moth seeking light, only touching for a moment before shivering away. He swallows a groan, holding still in the dark, waiting. He watches her wet her lips – the pit of his belly wicking to life – and though he longs for the hot curl of her tongue, she kisses him sweet, sweeter than he has breath for, or words, or time to wander in. She lingers as if she is pouring into a cup, determined to see it spill over. He lifts up, his nose sliding against hers. She laughs, achingly soft, fingers curling around the nape of his neck. 

“And, I choose to believe, so will you.” What he will take from this moment isn't hers to know; she can only hope it is enough. Enough to see him through the night. Enough to see him through whatever old war Hawke has dug up from its apparently shallow grave.

“Stubborn,” he chides, insides running hot and shivery. Even his fingers are warm.

“Like two rams over the same patch of grass, no?” she replies. “Take one,” she offers, leaving the brushstroke of her thumb over the curve of his cheekbone, “and do try to sleep, joli.” 

He watches her go. The dark swallows her whole.

Cullen retreats to his tent, a singular light to ward away the deep, deep dark of night. 

Rabbit-hearted, he stretches out atop his bedroll to wait out the long hours of the night. He tells himself this is not a vigil, and he is not going to war. He is not. He repeats it to himself, a crudely made talisman. _I am not in Kirkwall. Meredith is dead. Hawke is not my enemy. This is not war._

If Cassandra is bothered by the little sparrow-lark hopping between the ribs of their tent, she keeps her silence, as he keeps his. Just before that old enemy called Sleep comes for him, he reminds himself: _This is not war._

~ * ~ 

But it is war, in its own way.

He hasn't even been given a single day before it comes creeping back, circling. This time he knows: it wants to make him crawl.

That buzzing, blue-white ache is back in full, tightening him resolutely, hour by hour. 

It hasn't even been a day, he wants to rage. To bellow. Beat his fists against his desk until everything is red splinters and dust.

It hasn't even been a day. 

He hasn't sent his coat to the launderers; he still stinks, faintly, of horse and dirt. And already his bones are singing, too hot for his blood. The song is so loud now. Loud and ringing and terrible; endless, fathomless, wordless.

Skyhold had welcomed him, taken him back into hearth-smoke and laughter, and he'd repaid it with a nightmare. Woken himself up with a violent heave, to a moon the colour of spilt milk, in his cold bed. A bed that had grown narrower and narrower as the night crawled on, as he lay there, exiled. 

A lonely, self-imposed exile. 

From his tumble-down tower he'd watched the sun rise, bare feet burning on the cold stone, as he'd waited for the Fade to slip away, and become himself again. Only the buzzing had climbed up with the sun to sew a low burning into his joints. Rust his neck to his shoulders, dig into the meat of his brain. 

_Lyrium craving._ He says it to himself as if it is nothing more than an item to be checked off a list. _Lyrium craving. Varric hasn't looked me in the eye since noonday yesterday. Hawke has made no less than four attempts to bait me into an argument. Cassandra is watching me like I am about to fall over dead at her feet. And Mirèio..._

Mirèio is late.

He shivers, plucked by cold, as a cloud blots out the sun, darkening the mouth of the high windows. One thought plagues him, haunting and greedy for his attention: they have brought an interloper into their ranks. A shadow long and loping, slinking here from the memory of ash and fire and ruin. A shadow Cullen knows, to the marrow of his bones, will demand what it believes it is owed.

Kirkwall's noisy ghost has followed him back, dressed up in Hawke's skin, and Hawke's laugh. But that shadow is not quite the man he remembers. Something is subtly off. Something slighter than a hair, but enough to almost make the man a stranger. From his tower window he'd watched the shadow-man leaning against the battlements, a wine bottle dancing between his hands and Varric's. Hawke had done that in the Gallows, in Lowtown, in Hightown. Anywhere the man felt like. To mark his territory. Or to annoy. Or to make soft eyes at the apostate. But this man, is not that man. 

Instead it's the bitter, hard-eyed echo of a man Cullen remembers in vivid, painstaking detail.

He remembers long stretches of days where Meredith's venom had been too much. Had rattled through him, discordant, caustic enough to sour him to the bone. Often, Hawke had been the only sane, if unfriendly face he'd had to differentiate his days by. The only one who wasn't part of the Gallows, or the Chantry, or any other stinking, miserable shackle Cullen had fastened to himself in the name of childish fantasies of virtue and honour. But now that ghost had followed him here to the war-table, his jackal-leer honed and hunting beneath the roots above their heads. 

“I am sure news of my arrival reached you long before I got here,” Hawke says. Cullen watches his hands. He knows there's a better chance of catching the wind than catching those hands. They are always in motion, like any good back-alley rouge's should be. “But in case your spymaster left anything out: I am Hawke, of the Champion of Kirkwall variety.” He bows, grinning, one hand pressed over his heart. “Also of House Amell, for those of you who care about that.”

Josephine curtseys, the measured silver of her cultured tongue her answer. “I am afraid you will be hard pressed to find a single soul in our organization who has not heard your tale, Champion. It is rare to have such a personality within our walls.”

Hawke straightens, nods. “Ah, Varric's books again, I see. At this rate I'll have to burn down his publisher's house to get some respite from the damned thing.”

“Do you have a first name, Messere?” Leliana interrupts. 

“Yes.” Hawke replies, as if that is all the answer that might be had.

Leliana nods, rosebud mouth folded into a neat line.

The great doors go creaking open, iron pins squealing in their hinges. Beside him, Cullen notes Josephine straighten, as if, having just sighted her target, she is preparing her first volley.

“My apologies,” Mirèio demurs. “The Grand Enchanter and I were discussing matters.”

“So what's left of the Rebellion is here.” Hawke smiles, honest and true. “That is reassuring.”

“Not the sort of man to trust the word of a stranger, Messere Hawke?” Mirèio replies, face a narrow nest for her measuring gaze.

“No,” Hawke says, the word pounded flat as a nail. “In Orlais, they made it out as if you were the 'crusher of the vile mage rebellion'. As if you'd swept up all the remains of those wretched apostates into your Inquisition for a laugh.”

“Ha!” Mirèio snorts. “No, that is not what happened. I would never have left Redcliffe's mages to Tevinter, no matter the consequences.”

“Good. Although I am shocked the Knight-Captain allowed it,” Hawke laughs, leaning down to settle against the war-table, chin in the palm of his hand. “Was he absent for that decision? I can't imagine it pleased him to let a mage wander off to collect even more mages to bring home.” 

They have invited a wolf to the table, confident and vicious. Cullen sees it before he speaks, in the shadow fallen across the map. Hawke wants blood. But, fool that he is, he still chooses to bark anyway: a hound in the dark, warning milling sheep. “Now you listen here, Champion! I have no patience for your slander. You will not speak of things beyond your knowledge. You are a guest of the Inquisition. You have made no formal alliance with the Inquisitor, and this is not Kirkwall. Your petty campaign is growing tiresome...”

“I beg to differ,” Hawke interrupts, crisp as a knife through paper. “Your Inquisitor and I have made specific arrangements.”

“You – what?” Cullen snaps, turning to Mirèio. “Is there something we should be aware of, Inquisitor?” It is damnably easy to use that title. To shut the heat out of his cheeks and the ache out of his heart. He knows how much she hates that word, that weight. But he uses it anyway. Needs the distance, if he is to survive. If they are to survive. Though it gives him no pleasure to watch her marshal herself as if there is already steel at her throat.

“I offered the Champion protection.” She rolls her shoulders. “Along with the remains of the Kirkwall Circle.”

“I see.” Josephine pales. 

The words are out before his mind can even parse them. “And you did not think to discuss this before hand?” Cullen knows where this anger springs from. He knows where this petty, snappish dragon makes its home. He shouldn't feed it, but it has made of him a red nest, and that is all there is in him right now. That red and angry nest, churning. “You offered our banners without a single word to any of your advisors?”

Mirèio pales, lips thinned to nothing, hard-eyed and hard-edged. “I said nothing of our banners, Commander. I did not barter with the Inquisition's reach. I bartered with mine.” Extending a hand, she says, with all the force of finality, “I offered mine. My House. My Name. Not ours.”

“You did what?” The breath goes out of him in a single, skull-rattling blow. The world tips, stone floor sliding into the sky bracketed in the window-eyes. “Do you – did you ask who remains of the Kirkwall Circle? You offered your own protection to mages you have never met, and thought nothing of the consequences?” The words come rushing out, old and familiar and not what he wants. She grows narrower and narrower, harder. The sort of regret that has a greedy mouth finds him quickly; it has sharp teeth. 

“Commander,” Mirèio bites out, her talon-hands flexing, “you forget yourself.” Before she can dig the hole they both climbing into any deeper, Hawke slips in between she and Cullen like a blade between the ribs. Maker, but Hawke has a talent for interruptions.

“Consequences?” Hawke laughs, rattled. “Oh, Maker's Hand, have I died and gone to His side? Concern over consequences from the mouth of Knight-Captain Cullen himself? Maker bless me and raise me up. You lot let Meredith run the Gallows like her own personal abattoir for years, but _now_ you're concerned about consequences?”

“The Gallows was no slaughter-house!” Cullen rounds on the man, red-faced and breathing smoke, stoking the dragon in its red nest. “Do not come here and expect to sling your wares, Hawke, as if Meredith is still hanging over both of us. Yes, it was wretched. Yes, I admit to that, but it was no charnel-house, no matter what your apostate said of it.” 

If Hawke were not a man, he would be a set of teeth in Cullen's throat between one breath and the other. “Did you stand in the Gallows blind, Knight-Captain? You lost mages like it was sport! What did you say to yourself when they started throwing themselves from the windows, eh? What did you think when Meredith dragged Harrowed enchanters to the block for show? What did you call that? Was that not slaughter?”

The answer is yes, but it will ruin him to say it aloud. And to say it aloud – to that shadow-man who'd dragged himself and all his loves from Kirkwall while it burned, while Cullen stayed, eating silence, trying to pull bodies out from beneath the stones, a red-handed wraith outlined in ash – no. Never.

That is the truth of it: Hawke knows him too much, and too little. All of it ugly, and not what he would show to her, or to Josephine, or to Leliana. Especially to Leliana, who has seen him low enough that he need not get any lower. Most of all, he will not have Mirèio look at him if he is a rock she has only just overturned, all the black and wriggling things exposed to air and light in one great heave. 

If he steps wrong, she will not leave the red bite of her teeth in the soft cradle-space between his wrist bones again. She'll not throw her arm over his chest, and press her nose to the back of his neck; she'll not tell him what joli means. He will get far less than half.

“Enough!”

It is always her voice. Her brute strength dressed up in her brute will.

“Enough, the pair of you! Messere, I believe I made myself perfectly clear.” Her tongue falls on Hawke precise as a steel-tipped flail. “The price of protection was civility. And this year and a half has taught me well how fair a seller of that luxury I am. Civility, Messere, or the wilderness. Whatever lies between you and Commander Rutherford, it is done. I say it is done. If you disagree, there is a square of dirt in my courtyard, should you wish to test my price.”

He does not know why he vomits up the words. Not when his heart is climbing up into his throat to pour some wild, blistering _joy_ into his lungs. She defends him. She defends him when she should condemn him? So why does he trade joy for bitterness? For hard-headed stubbornness? “This is not for you to solve, Inquisitor.” And just like that, he dooms himself. “This is between myself and the Champion.”

Mirèio scoffs. Cullen jerks back as if struck on the cheek. 

“I am involving myself, Commander,” is her reply, curt and cold. “For the sake of the Inquisition. Messere Hawke is necessary to finding the Wardens, and we must work well enough, for long enough, to see this through.” She'd said much the same only a few nights ago, but this time it has a hollow ring.

“I see.” He has a voice. He can speak. He can tell her no. He can do a thousand things, and yet nothing. Either it is gut himself now, or later. And to only _now_ or _later_ is no choice he can love. 

_Do you?_ That is what her eyes ask of him. _Do you understand at all?_ But he cannot divine intent from silence, or an unyielding gaze.

“You may call me a tyrant in this if it pleases you, but I will not have petty bickering when we are still so far from finding the where the wardens have gone, and what it is Corypheus plans for them. I am no diviner. I do not know what is coming beyond seas of demons. Beyond fire.” She turns to Hawke. “I told you plain, Messere: I need your help. All that I ask of you is not to harass my people for an old grudge. Not when the world is ending.”

Tyrant? Oh, here is the knife's edge. Here is sharpness beneath his feet, and they are both teetering on it. The slightest misstep will see them both cut. Whatever tenderness – whatever truth – he'd shared with her in Halamshiral's dark night, when they were sewn skin to skin, it will vanish with today's sun. All those coins he's plucked from her mouth, all the strands of her hair he has woven, that will be gone, and he will tumble down, down, down to the bottom of his mountain, bent-necked and empty-hearted. 

“Perhaps this is a lesson in consulting with your advisors, Inquisitor.” Josephine's voice fills up the void, a pointed sharpness disguised as a gentle press. 

“To what are you referring, Ambassador?” Mirèio flicks back, steel ringing against steel. 

“Halamshiral, of course.” The world seems to narrow, as if Josephine is holding a line of words above her head like a sword – in the falcon's guard, high and gleaming – simply waiting to bring them soaring down. Cullen remembers, not for the first time, that Josephine is Antivan, and knows well how to harry an opponent, how to steal their blood in little cuts until they are emptied, beaten.

Josephine spins her threads, clipping here, marshalling there. “You promised me we would discuss Halamshiral, Inquisitor.” There is just enough sourness in her mouth to sharpen her tongue to a sting. “I must know: what happened at Lauds?” _What have you done?_ hangs in the silence between. “It is rare enough that her Majesty would invite so new an ally to such a private, intimate ritual. And you are not of the court.”

“Princesa.”

“No.” Josephine refuses her deflection, shaking her head. “No, not today. It has been three, no four days! You will explain.” Her free hand cuts through the sun-soaked air, her quill striking, pecking – a relentless bird. “You will explain why I have Empress Celene's formal acknowledgment of your...”

“Stop.” Mirèio snaps a fraction before Cullen does, and the word ends up shared out between them like the flick of a switch against skin. For a moment, she looks to Cullen, to Josephine, to the stone wall between their heads. “This is not an appropriate topic at the moment.”

Hawke's hunting eyes land squarely on Cullen's face. He stiffens; Hawke's attention is like wings: angry, beating wings snapping at his cheeks, claws catching in his hair. It's like the man wants to gut him him just to see what's on the inside. As if the man is expecting something other than blood and guts to spill into his hands.

Maker but he wants that man on his knees, neck appropriately bent.

A shuddering, reeling sort of memory presses against his eyes with all the force of a storm rod rammed into his skull: not so long a life-time ago, that was how he looked at his charges. 

_What are you today, Enchanter?_

_Ser?_

He can't remember the boy's face. Or his name. Only his brown hair, and his scullery-maid hands. On his knees in the kitchens, suds a murky rainbow between his fingers. He doesn't know why that detail is so clear, why it's pressed so perfectly between the miles of blank pages in the space that became the time marked _before_ , and _after_.

Of course he knows the answer now: flesh and blood, like anyone else. It had always been that.

Josephine's outrage drags him back into the world. “Not the appropriate time? When, pray tell, is the appropriate time? You have avoided my questions for days. There are letters of recognition here that must be addressed. Letters seeking details of the Commander's bloodline. The Empress and Marquise Briala sent you a pair of lovely masks. Masks!” Josephine gestures, as if the Breach were spitting green above her head. “Your heraldry on both! What have you done?”

“Nothing,” Mirèio says through gritted teeth, “that need be discussed here, now.”

“Now I am curious.” Hawke drawls, once again leaning out over the table, chin in the cup of his palm, the smile on his mouth transparent as a curl of wax, but strangely mocking. “Why would the Orlesians give a fig for your bloodline, Knight-Captain?” Despite the grin, his black-bird eyes stay cold, and needle-deft.

“We are not having this discussion, Ambassador.” 

“Yes, Inquisitor, we are. There is no time to wait on your comfort. Celene is expecting our answer. Marquise Briala's position depends upon it.”

“In what manner could that possibly be true?” Mirèio curses. “How, in the name of the Maker, does anything I choose to do affect the Marquise?”

“Do not be obtuse,” Josephine replies. “You know full well how it does. You are a not a common sheep-herder, no matter how you pretend. You gave your taillole to the Commander. Your dressed him up in your House's colour, in the fashion of a Marcher already devoted. Did you expect nothing to happen?”

“Ambassador, what I expected to gain is not to be discussed. It is not your concern. It is no one's concern but mine, and the Commander's. Devoted?” she hisses, furious as a bear biting the hands invading its den. “Orlais would not know devotion if it descended from on high to clap each one of them on the fucking mouth.”

Cullen makes a noise, some low, nettle-noise he cannot keep quiet. Here is the price for the kindness she gave him, here are the consequences for weeding out the hands that grasped at him, and the tongues that wagged in animal mouths. _They'll think you my lover, or they'll think you my champion._ Only, it is much more than lover. It must be. It cannot just be lover. 

“Inquisitor,” Josephine rallies, “do not pretend such a thing with me. Did you truly believe Orlais would take no notice of the Teryn-Ascendant of Ostwick declaring the Commander of the Inquisition her consort?”

Cullen is deaf, blind. Consumed by white. Only there is no moss under his hands, no heat along his right side as she settles beside him, to offer him an arm to cling to in the towering, wiped clean silence of his mind. “Consort?” he croaks. Her eyes flick to his, holding for only a moment. He could drown in her grey; drown in her apology, her shame shining harder and higher than any moon.

_Are you married, Commander?”_

_Not yet, but I am..._

“You go too far, Ambassador.”

Josephine is not given the opportunity to finish.

Cullen had stumbled upon a snake once, as a child. The little green thing had been sleeping under the knotted roots of a blackberry bush, and he'd been sticky handed, purple juice on his collar and fingers. All it took was a single shake of leaves and the snake had reared up fast, between one blink and the next. It had weaved a moment, and then struck, a dart of green and white. 

Hawke is faster than that little snake.

“Surely this is a joke?” Head thrown back, he roars with laughter, disbelief splashed over his face “You? No.” Hawke leans out far, one finger pointing, the Maker on his throne, hurling bolts from a hot white sky. “You and and he?” Hawke gestures, finger wagging like a weather-vane between a head of ink and a head of gold. “You truly haven't finished Varric's book then, Inquisitor.” He shakes his head as if he has been told the finest joke in all the Maker's creation. “And here I thought mages were not people like you and I.”

Somewhere, someone draws in a breath as if swallowing past ice. An animal silence springs up, snapping, greedy for every scrap of air in every pair of lungs but Hawke's. Cullen's spine stiffens, rage pouring down to lift his neck and sharpen his teeth. “You bastard,” falls out of his mouth, red and steaming, onto the table.

“Though,” he glances at the Inquisitor, her formidable form a shadowy spear at the edge of his sight, “I can see why you would be moved to allow the Inquisitor her personhood, Knight-Captain. She doesn't seem the sort to bend a knee.”

There is absolute silence. Deathless, implacable silence. Each one of them stares at the other, as if the silence has become real, alive. A beast in the room, on the table, red jawed and devouring, digging pink scraps of marrow out of the yellow white slit of an opened belly. They are all watching the beast eat, awaiting its teeth. 

Her horrified face fills Cullen's eyes, his throat, his chest. He can hardly think; hardly breathe. And then it is his turn to be the snake, lashing out at the hand breaching the only green shelter left to him.

Adrenaline kisses him, gives him wings. He is over the table before anyone can shout. Before anyone can move, he's broken his hand over Hawke's white teeth. He pulls his hand back, snarling, and the red on his knuckles is so satisfying he buzzes with it; the weightless fire of it could swallow him whole, leave no bones behind.

“You infuriating, holier-than-thou, mealy-mouthed coward!” Oh, he is so angry. Black-bile bitter and furious, cold to the bone, and burning, burning. There's ash in his eyes. He raises his fist again. Meredith shrieks in his ears, laughing. But Hawke's open palm connects with his ribs, driving the air out of him. The second slap lands on his jaw, and white explodes behind his eyes, the ringing in his ears nearly deafening. _Back alley rogue_ , he reminds himself, shaking the pain of Hawke's slap out of his head. 

“Come on, Knight-Captain,” Hawke bellows, spitting, cackling black-bird low, sucking back the blood in his mouth. Seven years worth of words he's kept and tended to towering vines in his head get knocked back down his throat as Cullen ducks low, faster than a man in heavy plate has any right to be. _I'm getting old_ flits across his brain as Cullen's head drives into his chest, a star-burst of pain running through him. The world blurs and he bites his tongue, stone biting deep into his back. He tastes more blood, coughs. The back of his skull connects with the wall in an audible snap. Everything goes soft, dipped in muslin white, echoing as if underwater. There's a fist in his hair, a scarred mouth and its accusations snapping for his throat.

“You think to come here to drag that horror up with you because you've not had enough,” Cullen snarls. “Why?” he all but howls. “Is it because you think I am not sorry? Because I am not suitably cowed?”

“You let people die.” Hawke drives his elbow into the man's shoulder. Cullen yelps, white teeth flashing, and Hawke knows: there's no chain around his neck now. “You called them monsters to my face, my little sister standing behind me. And then you came and took her away, as if you were doing me a great service.”

“She came willingly,” Cullen bellows, pulling back to dig deep for Hawke's soft liver. 

“And you still tell yourself that as if it matters!” Hawke shouts, determined to cram his words down Cullen's throat, just to watch him choke. “How many years did I come to see her, and you'd trot out the same tired song, eh? Oh Messere Hawke, perhaps if they understood why we beat them, why we shame them, why we press that Brand to their foreheads, they would not cause so many problems.” The hand in his hair tightens, and Hawke heaves against that implacable force. He gets an inch before Cullen comes back, relentless as the tide, his red-knuckled hand flying at his eye. Lashing out, his foot connects with Cullen's ankle. The man stumbles, knee momentarily sagging. “You think three years matters to me, dog?” He pushes, Cullen skids across the stone. “A hundred years would not be enough. You were her right hand, her second. Your refusal brought her down, not mine,” Hawke spits. “But no, you waited. You waited until they were beaten into oblivion, until all that was left was run, or die. Because we have divine right over mages, you said, since they are all demons in wait, and nothing more.”

Snarling, wearing a mouth like a dog of war, Cullen reaches for his sword. 

A snapping green viper skins the tip of Hawke's nose, and Cullen's. Two iron-boned hands push them apart. A roaring voice strikes Hawke square between the eyes seconds before that same viper hand bites, its fingers sliding around his throat to kill his breath. 

“If you move again, I will crack your skull open on this stone, Champion,” Mirèio breathes.

“I am not the dangerous one,” Hawke chokes out, holding the words between red teeth.

“Ha!” She tightens her fingers, searching for the wing-beat of his pulse beneath her palm; she wants that wheeze, that gasp of the truly desperate as their world darkens and their breath narrows into nothingness. She wants to make this stranger crawl. “Give me a reason,” she growls, her mouth nothing more than teeth.

“Are you deaf, Enchanter? Why keep a man who hates what you are...”

Cullen surges forward, snarling. “Fade-born wretch,” he spits. Oh he still wants blood – the whole of his world dipped in red, red, red. His bones are singing, wailing.

“Get back!” Mirèio snaps, heaving Cullen away. “Stop this, joli. Stand down.” 

Cullen blinks, breathing, shaking the red from his mouth, his eyes. From over his shoulder he hears Leliana draw in a quiet breath. He turns, catching the seam in her porcelain face crack, surprise spilling out in a naked flash before she seals it away again, deft as ever.

“Joli.” Leliana chuckles, tucking her hands behind her back. “Douce dame jolie, no? Comme dans les chansons anciens? Avez-vous demandé pour son jeton d'amour? I never took you for such a romantic, Inquisitor. Though it certainly explains much.” 

Cullen turns away, back to Mirèio. Watches her mouth collapse into a beaten line, her eyes squeezed shut against her own misstep. Hawke moves an inch and she bears down, thumb digging into the bob of Hawke's throat. “Peace?”

“Peace,” Hawke nods, already licking the blood off his teeth. In the morning there will be bruises the exact shape of her grip.

She lets him go all at once; the great, rattling gasp of air Hawke sucks in is profoundly, perversely satisfying. Helps her settle her shoulders, and put away her talon-hands. “Sénéchal,” comes floating out of her, scoured of all inflection. She presses a hand over her eyes, sighs, a sloughing of air that keeps its secrets, and fades to illegibility. “Was that necessary?”

“It kept you from spilling blood, no?” 

“Yes,” she says, breath hitching sharp.

“Inquisitor?” Josephine attempts, head high but shiver-tongued.

Mirèio's shoulders collapse, not in pretty ruins but ground down dust. “Out,” she rasps, that long red mile back with a force, dragging her over rocks. “Get out, all of you. You especially, Champion.” It isn't worth the trouble to spare him a glance. 

“Inquisitor,” he bows, bent double for only a moment. 

The door groans, spits out Hawke's singular, loping shadow, and bangs closed again.

Josephine, ever the builder of bridges, speaks first. “Maker, forgive me, I did not think – oh Mirèio.” 

“You are my advisors!” she bellows, fists beating down on the table in a bone-rattling crack. “And we are trying to save the fucking world. We cannot do this again. We cannot snap at each other like this. We can't.” She sinks lower, forehead pressed to wood. “I am sorry, Josephine, that I did not tell you the whole mess, but I had no desire to drag my life through the courts of Orlais. And I cannot do this now. I will not. Briala will wait. Celene will wait. They must, please.”

“Of course,” Josephine replies, spine pressed to ram-rod perfection; her little, ink-blotted hands busy themselves with rearranging her skirts, if only to hide the wet regret in her eyes. “As your Worship requires.”

Mirèio, rising up from her hunch, hides her mouth behind her hand; this bitterness is for herself, and no one else. “I do not ask because I require it, Princesa. I ask because it would be a kindness we sorely need.”

Cullen does not have to ask who the _we_ is. No one does.

Leliana is first to move, as always. Quickest hand, quickest blade, quickest step. She goes like Hawke: a shadow spit out by a groaning door.

Josephine stares for a moment, fists clenching and then unclenching, worrying at her lip. With a peerless curtsey she follows in Leliana's wake, and does not remind Mirèio of their noonday tea, risen now to a sort of ritual for them both. Now is not the time. There are letters to write, favours to ask, seals to press into wax, all in her unwavering dedication to making distant chances less than an inch from her grasp. It is the least she can do.

The door slips shut, muffling the beaded click of Josephine's shoes. Silence returns, vengeful and sweet. They stare at one another. There is blood drying on Cullen's cheek, across his knuckles. 

They are both in that old white yard, strangers staring at the other across a noisy, snow-choked field. There's no apple in her hand, and no charcoal in his, but that hardly matters.

“I – Maker, Cullen – I truly don't know what to say. Fuck,” she curses. “Shitting fucking Void, what are we doing? What just happened?” Her silver tongue is gone, shrivelled up in her mouth.

He touches her arm – the lightest touch, the tips of his fingers more tender than the agony in his chest should allow. His heart climbs up into his throat, too big, choking. “I don't know.” 

“Are you angry with me?” she asks, a shadow, black braids hiding her eyes. It's all a mess in her head, beating away in an ugly tangle. This is easiest. Cleanest. Just a question. A rock to work up from, until the shape of this between them is something more than just spit and bloodied knuckles.

“Yes,” comes cracking out, outrunning the sensible part of himself that would keep it pinned under his tongue. She balks, but he's slipped his leash again. “You do not know that man like I do. You should have waited. You should have asked us, any of us, if that was wise. Do you even know who still lives of Kirkwall's Circle? Mirèio there were terrible mages in Kirkwall. For every innocent, there were two bloodmages, a dozen maleficar. Anders' presence could destabilize everything we've worked to build between our mages and templars.”

“Cullen...” Hawke's condemnations rise up like shrikes, circling above her head. She hears their echo, rears up, every inch of her in opposition. “We don't know if...”

Cullen holds up his hand, marking space, drawing a line. “I saw them together in Kirkwall. I knew them, Mirèio. Where Hawke goes, so does Anders. You don't understand, you were not there.” Some cruel shape in him wants to shout: _You need to look. You need to see. See me. For the love of the Maker, see me for what I am, and not what you want me to be._

“You do not even know their names, and yet you would stand there and call them abominations, as before?” she barks, incredulous. 

It is neither soft, nor wholly an accusation, but the words run stinging across his cheek like a slap. “Again, you did not see. Meredith's methods were harsh, yes, but for a time, she kept the peace. She was all that kept us together, the only one standing between Kirkwall and a flood of bloodmagic and terror.” Mirèio jumps, looking for all the world like she is trying to climb out of her own skin.

“Do you truly believe that?” 

No, Cullen wants to shout, but his words are gone, gone, gone. “For many years, I did. Sometimes, I still do. It is, I am sorry,” he says, reaching out, “I did not mean to say that, in that way. Every day was a little war, Mirèio. Every day.” He shakes his head, crooning ghosts dropping from his neck. “Every day, there was a new demon, a new body. I still don't know why.”

She laughs, a hard, despairing bark. “Yes you do. You are a frighteningly intelligent man, Cullen. You know why.”

He stares at her, uncomprehending. Blind. Cut to down to a raw and bloody stump. 

They are strangers in a white-choked yard. 

“What choices did they have, Cullen? Why did they choose the windows over the Brand? Tell me, what choice did I have, in the woods?”

“None,” he blurts out, dizzy with the welling up of an aching truth, it's stinging petals unfurling inside of him, crawling in to the marrow, and the singing, to the blue. “No choice at all.”

_Fear makes animals of us all._

“Did you truly believe that? That we are not people? That we are only demons waiting to happen?” She has no right to feel betrayed, this is her own foolishness at work; her own arrogance come out to make a ruin of a young and tender future. She has no right to it, but it simply is. It lives, her misplaced betrayal, just under her breast, beating away with a fury she hasn't felt in years.

Once, he might have begged off, spun it in a clever fashion. Told her Varric wrote for the masses, and that the people of Kirkwall had grown tired of templars. They were easy to hate, after all. 

Feeling the knife's edge beneath his boots, Cullen draws up. Brave to the last, he tells himself.

“Yes, that is what I believed.” And oh, this is no choice at all. Backed into a corner and snarling, that is all he is. Biting the hand that fed, the hand that offered.

“I see.” 

Her heart is alien to her: a ragged, unmarked blot of land on a shore she cannot see. A half-dead thing, clinging to sodden wood, bobbing in a dark sea. “Is that what you were afraid to tell me? Is that what you wanted me to hear?” Perhaps that is why her tongue is so raw. Why her words are stuffed to their bones with some distant spectre of grief. 

It's not a blow, not quite, but Cullen staggers nonetheless. “No.” The word cuts the roof of his mouth no matter what way he turns it in his mouth. “No,” he repeats, “I would have had you hear it from me, not Hawke. I would have had you hear it, and know that I was not lying when I said I do not believe that anymore.”

She takes a breath. It's hard to hold on to his eyes, to even look him in the face. “I do not know what to say to that.”

Cullen laughs, claps a hand over his mouth to smother the sob. He nods, an empty clock-work motion. All his bones are dust; a noose would have been kinder. She should have refused him, that first night in the greenhouse – that would have been wiser. She's spilled so much ink to him; he's spilled so much ink to her. Childhoods laid out on the sunny blank canvas of parchment. Nightmares in the margins. Brawls and lovers and sprawling deserts. Lyrium. So much shared already, how can they – is there – is it too late? Is it all tumbled down, in ruins? 

“I need to think, I need some quiet. And so,” she pauses reaching out to lay her hand over his, “so do you, I think.”

He nods, emptied. She squeezes his fingers once, a weak excuse for a smile living and dying on her face in the space of a little breath. There are a thousand words for him to choose from – he wants to be angry with her, wants to lay his cheek against the sharp wing of her collarbone, wants to touch her knee, his mouth at her thigh. He wants to sink into the earth, and be forgotten. More than that, he wants to ask her if all is ruined; if he is only holding a dead thing for moment longer than is proper.

He does none of these things. Says nothing. _Later_ has kicked the plank out from under him, and he is dying by inches, swaying on the rope.

They go out from under the red wax, she and him. 

They go like wild things fleeing the spear and the snare and the baying of dogs.

~ * ~

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title is from Thomas Wyatt's I Find No Peace.
> 
> So full disclosure to the new folks here: you won't find canon Cullen here. You won't find fanon Cullen here. This really is my interpretation of him, and if you're looking for the Lion of Skyhold, you will be disappointed. I'm not writing this to portray a traditional sort of masculinity. That's not what's happening here. And in all honesty, no matter how troubled and seemingly 'weak' Cullen is here, I promise he'll get better. It's just that, from my very personal perspective as someone who falls into a minority category both in ethnicity and in religion, I feel very strongly about the process of an individual with significant social and personal power coming to terms with their bigoted choices. Cullen's redemption arc is kinda awful, and I firmly believe that old trope of 'oh he's cured by love and good sex' is trash. Healing takes time, learning to be a better person takes time, and it's hard, long work that never really gets easier. You just get better at doing that work. So if you disagree with me, or you hate me for being mean to Cullen, please come talk to me in the comments. I'm more than happy to listen to you, and have a conversation. 
> 
> Oh, lol, before I forget, I also have a running soundtrack for this fic if anyone is curious: http://8tracks.com/knight_song/noli-me-tangere


	21. I find no peace

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so sorry this took so long, everyone. I have no excuses other than real life and the usual writer problems. So I just want all of you to know, every comment I have ever gotten on this thing has meant the world to me, no matter what. The fact that so many people have clicked on this, when it is literally so profoundly against the grain of every other Cullen/F!Inquisitor fic out there is frankly incredible to me. 
> 
> To the folks who've connected with me through tumblr, thank you.
> 
> To the ones who've reached out here, thank you.
> 
> I definitely won't take 5 months to update this time, I have more than 20K+ written for this chapter and I thought it would be too much to just dump on you guys all at once. So I'm going to polish the next half up a little more and get it out to you quick. 
> 
> Again, thank you, all of you, for your patience, your support, and your kind words - even if I can't pace for shit, lol.

~ * ~

Hawke plays well at being a shadow when he wants to be. And if Kirkwall was good for anything other than suffering, it was good for one thing only: teaching him how to be a shadow. But this isn't Kirkwall. This isn't even a city, only a castle and a chapel; a sprawling yard and a kitchen fit to burst at the seams. And he's not being chased by templars, or hounded by petty thugs. Only a woman. But sharp teeth know sharp teeth, and she's found him in his nest anyway, in the topmost portion of the mage tower.

If she asks him why he is here, why he chose this place, he isn't sure he could answer.

The children had been curious. Some of them had known his name. 

That was the worst of it: little smiles in little, utterly oblivious faces. And what's harder still, is that he knows the truth. To them, to the little mages who hardly know their letters and still need to have their stockings put on by others, he isn't a person, only a name: an indistinct shape pressed between pages and pages and pages of Varric's colourful lies. 

A hero.

A hero, brave and betrayed.

Betrayed by love and lover alike.

To some of their guardians: a fool with a city still burning at his back.

Sometimes, he can't even say _his_ name aloud for fear of what he'll see on other people's faces. Especially the mages. 

Their hate stings the most.

“Champion?”

“Hawke,” he replies, keeping the mountain's white, unbroken spine in front of him. “Just Hawke.” 

“As you wish.”

Her smile makes him shiver. Takes him back to an old, old summer night. He is standing in Lothering's forrest, Malcom breathing beside him, sheltered in the black pines, an arrow nocked and drawn back in full, the resinous smell of gut-string and pine sharp under his nose, the loamy earth spring-damp under his feet. And then: a loping shadow. A singular cry. Then, pressed between his breath and the white light of the moon: a wolf, the meal in its mouth turned a clotted red; a thin neck bent between long teeth.

He can't help but wonder if she's as good a hunter as her smile.

“Is your whole name only for some, Messere?”

“Yes,” Hawke laughs.

“Good choice,” she replies, leaning down to rest her elbows on the stone. “In Nevarra, they believe names hold true power. More power than most spells, even. To know a thing by its name, is to have its heart laid open to you. Or, at least, that is what Dorian tells me.”

“Is that one the magister?”

“Altus,” Mirèio corrects, “from Quarinus, lately of the Minrathous circle.”

Hawke laughs again. Anders had spoken of Tevinter's circles as if they were a wonder unparalleled. He'd fought with him over that, Fenris bristling and righteous at his back. But that seemed so long ago, and he hardly has the energy to be angry about it anymore. “Your magister, does he teach here, in the tower?”

“Yes.” This man with the blackbird eyes, he dances so beautifully, all teeth and flash and cutting before whirling away. She's always loved rogues, in all their messy glory. 

“And your templar, he didn't protest?”

Mirèio sighs, a great, long heave. “Commander Cullen has never made any attempt to interfere with the Inquisition's mages. His templars do not patrol the tower grounds, and he posts no guards in the classrooms, or the sleeping quarters, or the practice fields. He has never offered to. Though I must admit, I never offered our templars the chance to suggest it in the first place.”

Hawke smiles, looking up to the great blue vault of the sky. For a thin sliver of a moment, he thinks he'll drown in it, or fall into it, or simply reach up and grab a handful of cold clouds and be borne away on its winds. 

“You seem pleased by this. Why?” Blunt as the business end of a hammer, she turns to him, taking in the mess of his black hair and the sharp, cutting hook of his nose. Hawke looks closer to marble than flesh. Or maybe not marble, but sponge playing at marble, only it had grown too wet and so no more of the world can touch him, because there is no more room. No more space. “And don't say: 'you read Varric's book, didn't you?'”

Hawke laughs; it's an easy sound. “Alright.” With a shrug and a sigh, he turns away from the mountains and the terrible, wonderful sky to face the woman and her grin. “It's a long story, Inquisitor.”

“Trevelyan, if you must. Mirèio, if you would be so kind,” she interrupts with a wave of her gloved hand.

Hawke nods. “Marcher name? I knew a Marcher, once – the Prince of Starkhaven,” he says conversationally, shifting to lean back against the rampart, “and he was – unique – to say the least. Frankly, you Marchers are all an odd bunch. So full of piss and vinegar, ready to fight for your honour at the drop of a thread. He only pretended to be above that.”

Mirèio throws back her head and roars, laughter reaching out to push against the sky. “All true,” she says, one hand pressed over her bear and hart, “but trust me when I say, we Northern Marchers are much worse. Though I must admit, I've found those Starkhaven Marchers all a little odd, even for my tastes. Never met a Vael, they were gone long before I was running through Starkhaven's high-bloods.”

“I'll believe it,” Hawke zips back, a fencer's speed even in his tongue. 

“You're a slippery one, Hawke.”

Hawke only bows, an effortless acknowledgement of an unchanging truth. “Yes, well, I'm sure you have more skill at it than I do, Trevelyan. You were raised a noble, I got my title in a dice game, I'm afraid.”

“A dice game?” she laughs, shaking her head ruefully. “That is quite the achievement then. Who knew the Amell name was so easily wagered,” she laughs again, bewildered by the ease of it. 

“It is when you have a mage in the ranks. And a daughter intent on marrying one.”

“Ah,” Mirèio replies. “So it goes, no?”

Hawke nods. “It's good to see so many of them here. I knew Redcliffe was a poor choice, but Fiona couldn't have done better, not with the Lord Seeker and his dogs so determined to get blood on their snouts.”

“I did not envy her the choosing, though she and I do not agree that it was a good one, even if it was hard.”

“Why did you choose the mages, Trevelyan?”

Turning to face the man in full, she punctures him neat as a pin. “Now that is a stupid question, Messere. Ask me a better one.”

Hawke only smiles. “Did you ever consider reaching out to the templars? They could have proved useful.” It's a struggle to keep the corners of his mouth tamped down.

“No. You should ask Commander Cullen what I said when he asked me much the same.”

“The Knight-Captain and I have no reason to speak.”

“He's not your enemy, Hawke. No one here is your enemy.”

“But enemies are so much easier to manage than friends, Trevelyan.”

Mirèio sighs, rubbing a hand down her face before flashing her teeth. “My warning still stands, Hawke. Be civil. If you can't do that, stay away. Whatever you thought of him, whatever he did, it is done, and he is not the man you knew.”

“You sound very sure of that,” Hawke replies, sour-mouthed and hard-eyed. “Why?”

“It's a long story,” Mirèio replies, a wicked smile spreading slick across her face.

“Ha!” Hawke laughs, the sound raucous and sharp as a dart.

“But I am serious, Hawke. If you cannot be civil, leave him be. He's not yours to bother, even less to lay a finger on. Kirkwall is not a thing I can understand, not really, but this Inquisition has given shelter to far worse people than a penitent man whose title was once Knight-Captain Cullen.”

“Such as?” Hawke says, waving a hand as if to encourage her on.

“A man who tried to unmake time itself, if you must know. A disgraced Chevalier responsible for the slaughter of an entire Dalish clan, or so my spymaster informs me. Empress Celene's cousin,” Mirèio laughs. “That one tried to sell Orlais to Corypheus for a copper, and the promise to only destroy _most_ of the world.”

Hawke scoffs, chuckling, turning back to the mountains and their white, white spines. “That was a poor price, I think. Who does that for anything less than a sovereign? Not worth the fuss.”

“Well, she's in my dungeons now, so she has more than enough time to think on her price.”

“Penitent?”

“Maker, no.” The laughter bursts out of her like wings, and she tugs at the cuff of her glove, just to be certain the blood hasn't come back in the night. That she managed to make the lambs-wool white again, despite the accusatory red marring its fleece, is nothing short of a miracle. “That one will serve, or she will rot. Or I may give her back to her cousin, and her head will decorate a gate instead.”

Hawke only nods; a lifetime ago, he might have frowned, picked at this strange woman's words for strains of tyranny and cruelty as if he were a mummer bent on reading the sharp cries of birds for some scraps of prophecy, some shriek of swiftly flying doom. But there's none of that now. The sky is all he wants, huge and endless, unmarred but for the white mountain-heads, the peerless clouds. Kirkwall never had a sky like this. That sky never made him feel as if he could come apart at any moment, spread out his hands to the corners of the earth and climb with the wind; now, not even his bones would fault him his flying. That's all he wants: just one breath, one moment of soaring.

“This is quite the view Inquisitor.” The words are rough, rangy and tight; he is all those things, perched here on Thedas' throat. “In Kirkwall, when they called me Viscount, I had a view almost,” he laughs, “almost like this.”

“Did you worry what it meant?” Mirèio asks. There's a hand in her chest, shaking her, rattling her. 

Hawke turns to her, the white of the mountains burned into his eyes. He doesn't disrespect her by pretending he does not know precisely what she means. Her eyes are dark, narrow hoods; her mouth a beaten line, all her teeth tucked away. He turns back to the mountains. “Some mornings, if the sun came up just right, I could see the fog settling through Lowtown. It's toxic you know, makes the lungs seize up and bleed. You drown slow, by inches.”

There's heat at his back, the smell of oranges and bitter herbs, the kind that grow in salt-ridden tangles by rocky shores.

“And they asked me to attend galas, to give my opinion on the tax levies for the year. They asked me not to look at the stones the apprentices scrubbed clean once a month. They were always the same stones, and they always stayed dark, no matter how hard the scrubbing.” The great, empty sky calls to him, clean wind at his back, bracing, whistling. “But the City needed me, or so they said.”

Silence stretches like strings quivering on the draw.

“The view gets old, Inquisitor. And it never gets any smaller.”

“They say Thedas needs me.” Mirèio smiles, all her fears pressed into the hollows of her heart by shapes she cannot touch. “Or so I am told.”

“And that, Trevelyan, is why I don't envy you at all.”

She doesn't tell him she was raised for something like this, that she has fought and fought and fount, fed her blood to the earth and her heart into jars, just to keep what Right named hers at her first breath. Because this is not Ostwick, and these people are not her people. She doesn't need to hear: 'but they are yours nonetheless'.

She only says, “Thank you.” The wind picks up from there, whistling through ears, and hair, and the black spaces between white ribs.

“It never gets any easier, does it?”

“No,” Hawke laughs, black-bird eyes pinned to the horizon, “no it doesn't.”

~ * ~

He's trapped in the cadence of a thick, thick memory: all loud red, all purple black.

How can he unrun the blood? Unspeak the words? He can clean his knuckles, wipe his cheek. Shut up the windows in his office until his candles grow fat, glutted on the dark. But the close-clinging dark doesn't muffle the singing, or the words, or the blood.

Sat at his desk, head heavier than stone, he fumbles with the latch on the right-side drawer, hands shaking. Breath between his teeth, he digs. Prying it out, it comes up flashing silver; he holds it aloft, spinning it in the dark, its light running like water over his eyes. He remembers the way it felt in his sock: a warm and biting sliver of home pressed against the thin sole of his foot; how afraid he'd been that the quartermaster would confiscate it; the way he'd repeated his refutations over an over, every morning in the white haze of the courtyard, under the cold, wing'd eyes of Knight-Commander Greagoir, knowing he was a liar.

_We love no other but Andraste. Her Love is our reward. We serve not coin, or silk, or fine words. We serve Her. We are her Sword, and we need nothing more._

Her Sword.

The coin touches the desk with a little, silvery clink. 

It seems he's never been good at doctrines, not even at the very start.

He stares at it, at Her face, and the divine light behind her. Stamped in silver, the coin makes Her cheeks soft, her light winking like a flame pressed between two sheets of thin glass. Like this, it is as if nothing could touch her. But that's what happens to those who rise, is it not? They cannot come back down again; eternally pressed between glass. Untouched and untouchable, lest some blemish drag them back down to the dirt. Lest they wake, and ache for their lives.

What was She but a woman? A lover?

What is she, but a woman? A lover?

He can't unrun the blood, or unspeak the words. 

He can't walk back through time, through those heavy bars of light that had turned dust to burning flecks; he can't walk back to stand under the roots of the war-table, under the hissing red wax, and say, _Hawke, you are right. I should have done more_. That's not for him. He has no magic. None save a particular gift to touch the good things in his life, and have them turn to ruin.

That's all the magic he knows. 

But the world outside his door is loud, insistent, ever demanding. In a little while, someone will come knocking. A scout or a runner, with more parchment in their hands; letters in their satchels; reports and missives – all manner of noisy intrusions built to sharpen him just a little more.

He has no magic, no time, no peace.

Reaching out, he plucks up the coin and tucks it away, back into the nest of his desk. He shuts the drawer, hands shivering as if he is a man made old long before his time. The candles burn, fat and yellow in the meagre dark; he feels his years to the bone, bones that still sing, too hot for his blood.

Perhaps he's never been a good templar. Never been Her good servant. If he could put Her face beneath his foot, just to have a memory of home when it was commanded of him to give all to Her in service, then what was he? 

A thought comes crawling into his skull with all the force of a whisper, though it leaves him dazed, bloodied: _Have I ever – did I ever give myself to the templars in full?_

His fingers brush over the latch, the nest; his breath rattles in his throat. _Did they kill that little boy, Cullen?_

_Do my oaths matter now, if they did not matter then?_

He wonders when she will come, because he knows she will. 

When she does he will not plead, will not beg. Instead he'll speak. Give her his voice, his history, no matter how mangled and ugly, because that is what she deserves: the hand outstretched.

Choose.

Ask.

Decide.

Turning to the reports heaped high on his desk, Cullen wets his quill with the tip of his tongue, and gets to work.

~ * ~

Dorian calls at noon, and Cullen struggles mightily not to be disappointed. He comes in with a bluster, merry and chattering as a jaybird, all his colours worn to dazzle, an orange in his hand.

Cullen smiles through the water in his eyes. He does not pretend it's dust. And when Dorian's hand grips his elbow, warm and real and not born of the dark around yellow candles, he laughs, giddy with the sort of rush that usually only comes from surviving a fight, or pressing a bone back into place.

“Here now,” Dorian murmurs, giving Cullen's elbow a squeeze, “whatever's the matter with you?”

“You haven't heard?” he croaks. Ah, well then perhaps his folly hasn't been spread to Skyhold's four corners just yet.

“No,” Dorian replies, but the twitch of his moustache makes him a liar.

“I hit the Champion of Kirkwall.” He says it almost like he can't believe it himself. Like his hand belonged to another, and he was only watching. “Called him a dog.” He laughs. “Tried to put my fist through his Maker-forsaken ribs, if you must know.”

Dorian blinks. “Did you now? Whatever for?”

Instead of answering, Cullen says, “What do you know of the man?” It's genuine question, and he'd like an answer, if only to trade for more time to find his.

“Absolutely nothing,” Dorian laughs, kicking the door shut behind them as they go out into the sunshine together, his hand now linked through Cullen's. It isn't that he thinks the man will bolt, only that he knows one doesn't have to run to flee a place they do not want to be. And a hand is sometimes all that's needed to bring someone out into the light. “I assume this is where you tell me more, and we go to the tavern afterwards to nurse your grudge.”

“Grudge?” Cullen sputters, cheeks hot with shame.

“There's blood on your knuckles, Cullen.”

“Oh,” he says, simple as that. A neat sound, that turns his mouth down at the corners.

“Not to worry,” Dorian gentles, stepping up the stairs at a dead match for Cullen's soldier strides, “I used to do much the same. There was this _ignorant_ little whelp in the year above mine, at the Circle in Quarinius of course. He and I fought like scorpions. The day I managed to black his eye, I also managed to redden his teeth. When I got home, the domus was in an uproar, but there I was, smiling like Andraste Herself.”

Cullen glances at him side-long, a grin tugging, tugging at him, at the sour knot in his chest.

“Of course Tullus wanted to wash me at once, but I wouldn't let him. I'd earned that blood, damn it! No one was going to wash my victory away!” He stops just under the shade of the portcullis' tender green buds, searching Cullen's dour face. 

Cullen fills in the silence, smiling as if it is not a lie. “You were quite the little terror, weren't you, Master Pavus?”

“Ha!” Dorian huffs, giving the man a shake. “Did you expect anything less of me?”

“No,” Cullen replies, fixing the blank table's face in his gaze. It is easier to stare at nothing, than to stare at understanding. “No of course not, my friend. Shall I fetch the board?”

“If it pleases you to do so.” Let the man have his retreat; it costs Dorian nothing to give it. But it is hard to ignore the cut of Cullen's eyes – the way he heaves from frenzied to empty so quickly. Like a player on stage, masks flickering in hand between joy and sorrow as a wailing chorus weaves through the shadows on the stage. He would like to ask if it is always a war with him, if he is ever not fighting, but that may be too much light thrust into too much shadow; the templars he knew may have been toothless, but he knows lyrium shakes when he sees them. 

Cullen goes to retrieve the board with an unseemly haste, the sun pressing on his shoulders like a weight as he crosses the little courtyard. The need to retreat is a loud noise in his head, like the soughing of insects in the heat of summer's muslin dark. He shouldn't have left his office, or his candles; he should have washed the blood off his knuckles. He should have done many things other than what he has done. But then the chess board is in his hands and he's closing the door, crawling back out into the dusty noon-day sun like he's not a shadow hungry for food he can no longer eat.

The walk back is quiet, the milling crowd of voices only flitting past his ears rather than sticking to his neck. Objectively, he knows it's unlikely that Skyhold will gossip as Halamshiral did, but then he did not go to Orlais with House Trevelyan's colours wrapped around his waist. He certainly left with them, a yellow-bannered declaration louder than any words either of them might have spoken.

But like the arc of the sun above his head, he is unshakeable in his doubts. The sun rises; the voice returns; he regrets. And it's always the same voice, the one that he made for himself with his own two hands – built from fear, from the song in his bones, and that hateful purple crackling. The same voice that tells him he is unworthy, always, and that no one could care so well for a man such as he. 

Did she truly mean it? Did she truly intend to make him hers, just to spare him a moment's discomfort? Such wealth, such kindness, feels a stranger to him. There are no words to make real what lives in the red, beating core of him. Not for what is, or what might be. What he might have just ruined.

“Cullen?”

He blinks, and the world wrenches back into place. There's a pitcher of wine on the table, even a platter of neatly arranged fruit; he's somehow managed to get himself into his chair, even put his hands on his knees. 

“I'm fine,” comes out only a little roughly. He doesn't balk under Dorian's withering stare.

“Yes,” says Dorian, “and I am just a figment of your fevered brain, telling you to be kinder to yourself while bullying you with witty conversation and fruit trays.”

“What about the wine?” Cullen laughs. If Dorian notices the rattle of his lungs, he keeps his silence. He blinks; Dorian stays still, whole.

“I assure you I did not forget. I 'liberated' six bottles from the Empresses's collection, after all.” Dorian grins, wearing a fox's mouth, hands light as birds cutting through sunlight. “Falernan Grand Cru, just as Josephine said. And you'd best be appreciative, too. I don't want any complaining from you, or stubbornly uncultured Fereldan palate.” 

And then they go lurching back into their rhythm. Dorian presses a cup of bruise-coloured wine into his hands; the rattling of chess pieces draws him out softly, softly, tugging him back into the now, out of the clinging, soughing dark in his brain. He breathes. There's not much in him for anything but breathing – watching as Dorian sets the board tevinter style. 

“Dorian,” he chides, before taking a long draw from his cup. The wine is dry and light as air, sweet as the vanished summer; the chatter in his mind dims.

Dorian lifts a brow, waving a hand as if to say, _well, what of it?_

“It's good.” Too much in his chest for anything but short, clipped words, he leans forward. “But we aren't playing tevinter rules today, my friend.”

“Nonsense,” says Dorian, a little, narrow smile come to rest on his face. “It can't always be southern rules you know. There are other ways to be.”

“I know,” Cullen supplies. There are peaches on the tray, their honey coloured flesh shining wetly. With an effortless tug, he's pulled through the glass and into the green. He knows his hand will shake, but he reaches out anyway, nicking a slice of fruit that still tastes like the heat of her mouth brushing over his; promises whispered against skin; sticky-sweet welcome after months of ink and miles of separation. 

“Do you?” Dorian laughs, and it is not unkind, not entirely.

Frowning, Cullen nudges a rook into play, bullying his tongue into silence lest he say something too sharp. “It isn't that simple, Dorian. It never is.”

A string of clouds scuttle over the sun, throwing their shadows long over the stones; Dorian sighs. “As I have told you before – a little help won't kill you, dearest.”

Cullen pinches the bridge of his noise; shuts his eyes against the sting, and the coming headache he knows will likely spend the rest of the day slowly pulling his skull apart. “How?” he mutters, prodding his altus forward to capture Dorian's quaestor. “In what way could any of this be improved?”

“Tell me why you made a man bleed. That might be a good place to start.”

Cullen shakes his head. Something red and snappish stirs in his chest – that damned dragon again, sharp spines prodding him awake, into a thing that knows only stinging, only anger. A sloppy, trackless anger he can't quite beat into submission. “Because he is a dog.” _Because he followed us home like a wolf follows sheep, and now he's savaged us all. And I let him do it. Because I was slow, and afraid, and not brave enough when it mattered most._

But he says none of this aloud. “A fist is the only thing a man like that will listen to.”

“Check-mate,” Dorian barks, knocking Cullen's Divine to the black. “Manage yourself, Cullen. You are better than this.”

“You overreach, Ser.” It's the wrong words; the wrong tone; the old heart he'd put away in the same drawer as his lyrium kit.

“I do not.” Dorian doesn't bite his tongue for blood, but for the sting, the reminder: making yourself a better heart is no easy task. And sometimes there is stumbling, falling back. That summer with Rilenius taught him as much. He stands up, chair shrieking noisily in his rush, throwing Cullen into shadow. “Come find me when you are ready to talk, Cullen, like the civilized man I know you are.”

Cullen doesn't look up; he stares down at his tumbled Divine, the way her shadow cuts across white until it is eaten up by black. When Dorian's boots ring sharp against the stones – damning little hammers tapping away at the stiff, unyielding heart in his chest – he keeps his head bent, and his tongue between his teeth.

There's a thin string of song on the wind, rising up with the blood in his veins.

~ * ~

Out in the yard, the sun now sunk down enough to push between his shoulder-blades, he snaps at his men like he's marshalling them to war; he reprimands and corrects with the same tone, the same barking snarl: as if she's standing just behind him, Certainty strapped to her hip, and that infernal diadem shining on her brow.

How like Andraste she'd styled herself – he'd never quite gotten over that, never quite set it aside.

And yet he knows – knows better. It is stupid of him to still see her in that light. As if the Lady of Mercy would ever have held troth with Meredith Stannard, dead or alive. 

_But that's not what you said in the war-room._

His tongue needs a leash; the path from his mind to his mouth needs barriers, hurdles – anything to stop him from coughing up words he doesn't believe in anymore. 

But it's so easy to fall back. To pick old feelings up and put them to use again. Too easy to remember cutting his hands on blackened rocks; the reek of burning human flesh, the tar of rendered fat soaking into his lungs as he'd dug through the ruins; the way his hands had started to shake, just a day after they'd taken account, and the lyrium rationing began.

Did that justify his anger? Does he even know what it means to be _justified_ in one's actions? He knows, oh he knows it was wrong for Meredith to call the Annulment. Wrong to watch his Knights lock the doors and draw their swords.

So many died before Hawke arrived.

More after.

But where is the line drawn? 

Was Anders right? That is a question he's never asked himself. Something in him pulls away from the thought, sitting in his mind like the teeth of a sheer cliff. If he peers over, if he looks, will he fall? 

The templars, his knights, hadn't saved the mages. Not at first. The junior enchanters had saved them: the children, the apprentices. They'd chosen the stone tunnels running out to the harbour as the place to make their stand, Bethany Hawke at their front, their last and only defender.

And Keran. How could he have forgotten Keran? The lad he'd wanted gone from the Gallows for being demon-touched. No other templar had stood with the mages. Not one of his men, or him. Just that lad, and Hawke's sparrow-faced sister. That literal boy – already scarred by demons, already a witness to the horrors of magic – standing beside people he should have feared first.

Cullen balls his fists tight, tight enough to make his gloves creak; he looks down, and mercy's sword catches the hard edge of afternoon light. The noise of the yard crawls over him, crawls up to dig down into the white rod of his spine. It's all he can hear: the burr of steel and the dull roaring of practice combat, voices shouting, taunting, laughing. The Bull and his boys in the farthest yard, running breaching drills with straw men and wooden battering rams. 

To his left, one of the younger recruits stumbles, knees thudding against the dirt as he drops his shield, and his sparring partner stumbles, the dulled edge of her blade finding shoulder before shield. The lad yelps, and the lass drops her sword, reaches out, and just like that Cullen is standing in the courtyard, Kirkwall's stink behind his eyes, under his nose. 

_Get those knights up, Knight-Captain! Run them along the walls until they're sick on their feet. We cannot afford mistakes like this, not even training. What if that had been a lance of ice? Or a spear of fire? Get them up!_

There's no blood on the stones; the sky above his head is whole, and sweetly blue; there is no hand on his shoulder. 

_Get them up! What sort of enemy are you training them for, Knight-Captain? Mages will not wait for a man to get back up on his feet, get them up!_

“Rylen,” he calls, thunders. The fever song rises, blood beating against his eardrums, battering at him; relentless. A fork of pain splits his soft skull in two, arcing from the meat of his brain to the base of his spine, pulling him taut. He rattles in his armour, in his bones. Black spots spread across the field of his vision, eating up the cheerful blue; his head sags, and for a breath or four, he's afraid he'll topple forward, face first into the dirt.

_The Maker will reward me for what I have done, in this life and the next._

He sees it like it's already happened: his hand on the lad's gorget, shaking him. Sharp words in his mouth, a bellowing task-master, like the one he'd known in Honnleath, and the one he'd bowed to Kirkwall. But that's not what he wants.

“Captain Rylen!” His voice cracks against the stones, and the field of recruits stills, their steel falling down in the light. 

Rylen manifests along the walls, boots pounding down the stairs. “Ser?” he calls, salute crisp, mouth kept as neat as his hands. 

“See the men through this drill. Send Gavin to the healers, his shoulder's like to bruise.”

“Ser?” A young voice protests in the distance, somewhere out beyond the tidal crooning in Cullen's ears. “Ser, I'm fine,” the lad continues.

“No!” Cullen snaps. 

“Ser.” There's fight in the younger man, eyes hot as coals. Some old, cold thing in Cullen wants to push back, snap at the lad with a mouth full of teeth. He would have, in another life. 

_I have no use for tender hearted junior knights, Ser Cullen. Run them hard. Deny them lyrium rations, meals. They did not join the templars in the hopes of receiving kindness as their reward. They came to be the instruments of Her glory, the Hand of the Maker's divine will._

He reaches out instead, finding the edge where the lad's pauldron meets the smooth plane of his cuirass. “Ser Gavin, have you ever had a sword thrust between your pauldron?”

_If we are too soft on the younger ones, Ser Cullen, then we risk not preparing them for the horrors of blood magic and demons. Better they learn fear now, before it is too late._

He is not Meredith Stannard. He will not _be_ Meredith Stannard – not now, not _ever._

Gavin shakes his head. “No, ser.” 

Cullen opens his mouth; another forked tongue of pain cracks through the sky inside his head, biting deep, biting down. He grits his teeth.

“It bruises deep, lad,” Rylen picks up, a seamless transition. “You might have cracked your collarbone, or you might've had that steel jammed in there so hard your shoulder joint got damaged. Get yourself to one of the mages, and they'll set you right. And then you can get back here and have Ser Nena can pound a bit more sense into you, I promise.” 

Ser Gavin bows short and sharp, narrow face blanching as he bends, teeth visible between his pain-thinned grimace.

“Go,” Cullen waves, pointing to the little stone outcropping in the distance. Some healer had left the door open, and the windows are freshly washed, catching the golden mid-day light in a shimmer of heat and quiet dust.

The lad goes. Ser Nena appears, her dark face pinched between two cliffs of apology. Cullen shakes his head, holding a hand out as if to ward her away. “Don't trouble yourself, Ser Nena. You did well. Ser Gavin should have known not to drop his shield.”

“Commander.” A quick salute, and she turns away. He grits his teeth, biting down until his jaw is a line of aching nerves as the noise of elaborate Nevarran jesses at her shoulders rattles agains the inside of his head, each one like one of Varric's bolts thudding home against something pulpy soft.

“Commander?” 

“Knight-Captain.” Cullen recalls when he had to remind Rylen, daily, not to use his old title. But Rylen kept his own, and it's an odd sort of echo: a little stone thrown down the well of an old, old memory. “You have your orders. Keep to.”

“Ser,” Rylen salutes.

Cullen doesn't make it out of the yard before his stomach heaves, bile stinging the back of his throat. Over his shoulder, he hears Rylen's Starkhaven drawl pick up into a bellow, the corresponding din of silver'd armour and steel soothing and agonizing in equal measure. The yard is where he belongs, with his men and his plans and the war heaving up to hammer them all into the dust. But his knees are weak as chalk, and his head is a field of red flowers pushing up through darkness – a tenacious agony always ready for the harvesting. His lungs are water, and his blood is fire, the humming in his bones like nothing else he's ever known. 

There's no sweetness in this song. No comfort. Not like when he'd first learned its sound, and power had sung through him like water through flung-wide flood gates. Not like when he could touch that song, mould it into a holy thing he could wield in his hands: a blade of white fire to cut through the dark, through twisted flesh; corruption itself. 

Now it's a howling absence; a cruel shape, hunting in the dark; a blade buried in his sternum, sawing through him as if it had been made to rest snug against his bones.

But if he'd stayed in that yard, with that _thing_ gnawing at him, he'd have picked Meredith Stannard up out of the dirt he'd left her in, and used her again. As he had in the war room, under the branches choked in ribbons of red wax.

But he's tired of being weak, of being half what he used to be; tired of picking things up out of the dirt he knows better than to need.

So he can do one last thing, before he goes.

He turns back. 

“Knight-Captain,” he calls out, high and clear, moving out from the cool shadows gathered under the archway leading to the armoury, “send for the lady Fiona.”

Rylen nods.

“The men need to learn how to fight with the mages, not against them.”

“Sir.” Rylen's fist knocks against his gorget once, before he spins on his heel and takes to the shaded corridor leading to the mage tower.

“Rylen,” Cullen says, lifting his chin, fists curling and uncurling, “I want volunteers only. If the lady agrees, she is to attend with her volunteers. You are to work closely with her, understood?”

“Sir.” Another knock against his gorget, but this time his mouth is not so neat. “As ordered,” he smiles.

In the end you are your choices, and nothing more.

~ * ~

Flissa had all the windows in the tavern opened in the grey-blue hour before dawn. Soaked her rag in a bucket of hot water mixed with vinegar and a bit of lemon to carry away the sourness, and washed all the glass she could reach. She scrubbed and wrung and fussed until even the lead between the panes shone bright as new. 

The caravans had come up through the mountains two days ago. They'd come in with the Inquisitor and her party, back from Halamshiral, bringing Orlesians by the score. Pilgrims. Merchants. Chevaliers. 

And now the tavern is full to bursting, dipped in thick yellow sunlight and stuffed with the smell of oranges from Monstimard, and the sharp fragrance of the arbour blessing boughs hanging from the rafters – a mirror of the green struggling to break the thin ice still covering Skyhold's inner courtyards.

But still, it's just clean windows. She doesn't think much of it, at least not until the Seeker comes stamping in, knocking mud off her boots with that grim grin of hers fixed on her face.

“Thank you, Flissa.” 

“Thank me?” Flissa laughs. 

“For the windows,” Cassandra points. “The tavern looks lovely – a good thing to come home to.”

Flissa blushes, the rag in her hand suddenly the most interesting object in Thedas.

“We all appreciate your efforts,” Cassandra finishes before stamping up the stairs to the corner she'd claimed all those many months ago. Sighing, she eases herself into her chair under the newly cleaned window on the second floor, and thinks to thank Flissa again. It certainly makes it easier to read. No need to light the candle, or push her chair against the wall to catch the light. And so there is no end to her appreciation of the woman's hard work. Her toiling has made the windows come alive with light, clear and clean and open – as if welcoming the first gleaming of a patiently lurking spring. 

And for that – after Halamshiral and its cold, useless grandeur – Cassandra is grateful. 

She is less than grateful for the company, though. 

Hawke comes up the stairs like a cat; Varric like the dusty approximation of an owl. She still wants to shake Varric until he croaks out an apology, but that can wait. There are more important matters to discuss now. 

“Thank you for the invitation, Seeker, but I'm confused – why did you want to see me?”

It's an innocent question, but it sets Cassandra snapping regardless. She'd like to know if Cullen has washed the blood off his knuckles. Hawke certainly has, though the corner of his mouth is purpling, split lip still glinting like a fat ruby. “Because the Inquisition is in need of a man such as yourself, Messere. We are in dire need of people who have accomplished what you have accomplished.”

“Accomplished?” Hawke stabs at the air, though it might as well be at the Seeker's chest. “What, precisely, do you think I accomplished in Kirkwall?” 

“This is preposterous,” Cassandra splutters. An accusatory finger jabs at Hawke as she says, “I should not recount your own tale to you. You are a hero – ”

“Forgive me, Seeker, but you seem to be confusing me with a – what's that word, Varric? The one you used to describe the Guard-Captain in Swords and Shields, so Aveline wouldn't string you up by your cock outside the Hanged Man?” Hawke cuts a glance to Varric, all sour-mouthed and sharp-toothed.

Varric looks to the window, praying for a bird, or a rain of spiders. “Caricature.” It's not even noon-day meal yet. He hasn't even had his second cup of fucking coffee yet. 

Hawke turns back to the Seeker; he's met lean, blade-shaped women before, but this one holds herself too firmly to feel like anything less than the Maker's own hammer. “I haven't sat at a table and called noble born my equal in three years, Seeker Pentaghast, so I hope you'll forgive me when I say: you have me confused with a story-book character.”

“Caricature,” Varric huffs. “Andraste's tits, man, if you're going to ask for the word, at least use it.”

“My apologies, Messere Tethras,” Hawke bows, sweeping an arm out over the bare table.

Cassandra considers the man before her, considers his hands and his hard, blackbird eyes. “Champion?”

“That,” Hawke laughs, “is the nonsense I'm talking about. Caricature, Seeker, at its finest.”

“I beg to differ. I saw the ruin of Kirkwall. The Left Hand went herself to Grand Cleric Elthina. Most Holy was deeply invested in seeing peace return to the Circle. You stood at the forefront of that effort. You and no other.”

“Because there wasn't anyone else left to stand there, Seeker. I did what I was obligated to do. Nothing more.”

Cassandra snorts. “In every account I sought out, I was told something quite different. You were made Champion for a reason, Messere. The people of Lowtown spoke your name as if they were summoning a shield. The City believed in you.”

“Because they had no choice!” Hawke exclaims. “Because there was no one else left to stand between them and the Templars.”

Her shadow grows, stretches. “Your assessment of the Templars is unkind. They did their utmost to protect the citizens of Kirkwall.”

“Did you sleep through half of Varric's book, Seeker?” Hawke's skin is suddenly too small for his face. He grins; the shadows paint his mouth, his eyes stark as a naked skull. “I was not unkind,” he sneers. “It is the truth. Knight-Commander Meredith didn't give a cup of nug shit for anyone's safety, and she had only one goal: Annulment.”

Flissa arrives like Andraste herself, laden down with mercy, with food and steaming mugs of mulled cider. 

Varric nearly stands and claps, giddy at the thought of cramming a roll into Hawke's mouth for a bit of silence. There's been no time to talk, to tell him who he should pester, and who he should run from. Right now, he should be running. They should both be running.

“Thank you, Flissa,” Cassandra says, reaching out to take one of the trays from the woman. “This is appreciated. Please give our thanks to Master Cabot.”

“Oh no,” Flissa laughs, nudging the second tray onto the table between Varric and the glowering blackbird of a man she knows is the Champion of all stinking Kirkwall. She'd know that paint anywhere, “this is Master Donatien's doing. He's quite pleased with the shipments we got in from Orlais, my lady.

Cassandra huffs a delicate sigh.

“Those caravans were a blessing, hand to the Lady's Sword, I swear. And the kitchens, oh they've been all a'twitter about it. Sugar! Tevinter sugar, here! And chocolate, but I can never remember where that comes from.”

“Seheron.” Varric shouldn't remember so many of these silly little facts, but he's had his fingers in enough trade deals to know where his coin and his influence counts the least. One of these places is apparently food stuffs. Expensive food stuffs. Damn Orlesians.

“Of course,” Hawke laughs, an unpleasant noise about as sweet as a curl of freshly peeled lemon. “Good to know Orlais still gets a kick out of pissing around with this particular subtlety. I swear, all the charm of a mabari wiping its – ”

“Thank you, Flissa,” Cassandra interrupts. “I am sure you are in need of a break before midday ends.”

“Much obliged, my lady.” Choosing a hasty retreat, Flissa slips down the stairs, back to the tables and the detritus of the noonday meal. Humans are loud, and Messere Tethras would not know discretion if it bit him on his chin. She wipes the tables slow – the Champion has a voice like a burr, prickly-sharp and low, an odd, rolling thing that carries rather farther than it should. And besides, who is she to wonder at what the Nightingale has use for? 

“You always did think the Orlesians were worse than the darkspawn,” Varric laughs. “Glad to know that hasn't changed.”

“This is besides the point.”

“Seeker?”

Flissa shakes her head. Humans, born to argue. To fuss. To bark. With the pleasant reek of sour mash and sausage thick in the back of her throat, Flissa gathers up the tankards, waiting for a lull in the arguing. The Lady Seeker is bitter today, more than usual.

“Deshyr, if I desired a nuanced examination of Orlesian pomposity, I would ask Josephine.”

“Ancestors, Seeker, do you have change for all those ten coin words? And here I thought I was the only one who loved a good linguistic flourish in our little company.”

Hawke's laughter is just as match-strike bright and strange as his voice. Flissa finds herself chuckling alongside him, even as she slops ale onto her shoes as she turns. 

And meets a wall of silver.

The rest of the ale goes slopping onto the floor, and all she gets is a gruff apology and the back-end of the Commander's furred surcoat; ears ringing under the harsh clatter of armour as the man goes hurtling up the stairs.

From her place under the boards, it's not hard to hear their conversation.

Hawke isn't exactly prepared for this particular old ghost to come thundering up the stairs and break into their little pot of sunlight like a starving bear, but there it is: Cullen, breathing hard and red-faced, one hand on the balustrade as if the wood is all that's keeping him upright. For a minute, he forgets to breathe. Cullen looks a run-ragged mess, as if he's been drowning slow and the rope he'd a hold on had just betrayed him. 

The Seeker seems no less surprised.

“Commander?”

“My apologies, Seeker, but I must speak with you.”

Cassandra opens her mouth; even in the butter-soft light, Cullen looks haggard, weighed down.

“It cannot wait.”

Cassandra nods, and heaves herself up out of her chair, noonday meal forgotten, unfinished arguments still clinging to her shoulders like hungry vultures. She would like to tell the Champion, before she goes, that he is not the man she thought him to be, but Varric is a liar, and she a lover of grand tales, and so no blame can be divvied out without accepting her own share.

“Lead on, Commander,” she says.

They go out into the sunlight together, only it doesn't quite fall the same way, with the same welcoming promise. An omen, perhaps? A twin to the sickly blue shadows hanging under Cullen's barb-sharp eyes. For a moment, she forget about spring, and freshly cleaned windows. Instead, she thinks long and hard on lost time, and lives un-lived, and loves unloved, lost to dust.

~ * ~

The sudden dullness at noon slides back into a wash of gold before Mirèio accounts for the time and realizes she's playing the coward, again. This isn't a moment to avoid. Not a simple conversation that will end in laughter, at the foot of her bed. And tonight would be too late, too cruel. 

Standing up, she wipes the dirt off her knees, and goes back out into Skyhold's stone heart from her own green one. When she looks up, the windows wax white and too-bright, so bright she has to shade her eyes as looks up at his tower. It's well past noon now, nearly time for the evening meal. She's left this too long; she knows she has.

Taking the stairs up two at a time, her blood rises with the pace she sets, the banked heat of her anger bleeding into the still soft edges of her anxiety. The Great Hall is half-empty, and the newly arrived nobles have scattered, turned into little drops of Orlesian opulence lounging around tables nearest the high windows. 

She hates them, even though hate is a strong word; she has better things to hate.

By some small grace, she manages to pass through the hall unbothered, the jangle of her sword harness dulled by the polishing cloth wrapped around its hilt. Easing the door open, she finds the rotunda well lit for once, the thin sh-sh-sh of Solas' paintbrush and the meaty echoes of the Nightingale's crows the only noise for her to break through. And she does break through. Back out into the sunlight and down the long walkway to his door, dragging her growing anxiety behind her like irons. If she stooped down to count each link now, she could name each one, and the pins that stuck them to her ankles. 

She still has dirt under her nails, fingers leaving soft black on the latch when she pushes the door open. “Commander?” she calls into the shadows around his desk. It's not right to call him by his title, but she can't know who's in there, or who isn't.

A young dwarf greets her, the scout's wind-burnt face pressed into that familiar, blank neatness by the Inquisitor's shadow falling across the floor.

“Beg pardon, Your Worship, but the Commander left to see Seeker Pentaghast just after noon-day meal. He hasn't come back yet.”

“Thank you, Scout Moro.” Cullen's desk is neat, not a paper out of place, except for a box she's never seen before. It looks old and well-worn, but cared for. “Did the Commander mention why he was meeting with Seeker Pentaghast?”

“No, Your Worship.”

She goes back out through the door, the centre of her buzzing like a wasp nest suddenly kicked out of its branch. Solas frowns down at her from his perch atop the wall, his forehead marked with a single score of paint the colour of a dying sunset. 

“Inquisitor?”

There's no merit in pretence. “I'm looking for the Commander, ghi'lan.”

“Ah.” The paint brush makes a faint clink as he sets it down on the wood slat. “The Commander passed this way perhaps an hour ago – it's difficult to tell time with no windows, lansila.”

“Thank you.” She puts his reply behind her quick, as if teeth snapped at her heels.

Boots echoing on the stone, she takes the path down into the inner courtyard, past the great double doors and their tattered yellow ribbons snapping in the wind. She scans the lower courtyard, but Cassandra isn't in her usual place, beating the stuffing out of a training dummy. Today it's Blackwall, and Blackwall's little crowd of magelings watching as he carves. That they are all unsupervised sets a little warmth trickling through her chest; it is good to see. 

But she still needs to find Cassandra. Turning, she clatters down the steps, Scivias winking in the sunlight as she makes for the tavern, the enchantments spooled into the ruby hot under her finger, and loud in her ears.

Th door is ajar, spring wind bustling in to sit with the patrons as they laugh and eat, and drink. So this time, the music only stops for a moment when she enters, and, with a half-hearted greeting to Flissa, goes thumping up the stairs to Cassandra's favourite reading nook. 

“Bristles?” Varric barks, surprise bare on his face. 

“You are not Cassandra,” Mirèio replies. She takes the last steps slower, all too aware of Hawke's long grin. 

“'Fraid not,” Varric laughs. “Looking for her?”

“Yes, and the Commander.”

Hawke sighs, digging his knife into the cheek of a sweet, red apple; the wet crunch is loud as the crisp flesh gives way in his hand. “Don't bend your neck, Enchanter.”

“I am no Enchanter,” Mirèio snaps. _I am no beaten, Circle-cowed mage,_ she'd like to say. But that is cruel, and a lie. She'd been willing to die for those beaten, Circle-cowed mages. There's time still left to do just that, if she must.

Varric offers up, “Try the armoury. It's usually deserted this time of day. Not too many folks milling around, listening in.”

That wasp's nest in her chest comes alive again in a jarring, stinging, drone. “Has something happened?”

“Not sure,” Varric shrugs, resettling his papers against the table. “Only Curly seemed like he needed to talk to the Seeker. A lot. Didn't look so good either,” Varric frowns, cutting a glance at Hawke.

Hawke's hands fly up, ever like the bird he's named for. “Now now, my friend, don't worry. The Bear and I have a deal. I won't piss in the Commander's eye if he stays out of mine. I've not said a word to him today, I swear.”

“Try the armoury, Bristles,” Varric repeats. “And when you're done, come eat with me, got some things to talk with you about.”

“No promises, Varric.” She laughs; it's the best she has to cover over the fear, the one that beats in her like a storm inching closer to shore – every whisper of _What now? Is it the lyrium?_ pounding away at the cliffs in her mind.

The stairs groan under her boots but she doesn't care, all that matters is getting to the armoury. 

_Have I left it too long? Should I have gone right away?_

She doesn't want to think of those little blue vials locked away in her chambers, or the carefully monitored caches stacked away in the Undercroft. It would not be easy for him, but neither would it be terribly hard. His men love him, and the templars still under his command would understand, wouldn't question his need. 

No, she won't think about that – the only thing waiting down in that particular darkspawn hole is ruin. 

The yard is beaten down with the soft, damp decay of winter detritus. She breathes in the sweet, heavy scent, and tries for quiet. It does little for her. And when the armoury door comes into view, the wasp's nest twists itself until it is just her heart beating drum-like in her ears – the door is slightly ajar, and even from this distance she can hear just how loudly they are arguing. Not the words, just the tone; the naked anger.

“You are not listening to me, Seeker!”

“I am, Commander, but we both know –”

“No, you do not! What is the purpose of it all, if I am unable to keep the simplest of my oaths? It is relentless, I can hardly –” Cullen hisses, breath whistling between bared teeth.

“You asked for my opinion, Commander, and I gave it to you. Do not come to me and pretend as if this is the sole source of your concern.” 

“Concern? Cassandra, this is more than concern. This will only worsen. Would you rather save face than admit this cannot be done, that I cannot continue?”

“You give yourself too little credit, Commander,” Cassandra protests. She sounds as if she has been caught unaware, clapped up the side of the head by the gauntlet of Cullen's forceful confession.

“No, I know what kind of man I am.”

Cassandra balks, an obdurate noise loud in the ensuing silence.

Mirèio has lived through the teeth of dragons, would be gods, templars. Survived cleaning her own blood off her hands. But this is...to hear Cullen speak of himself like this...

Her snapping, heaving thoughts cannot focus long enough to suss the difference out. She only knows it is _different_. Perhaps because it is not her life she will lose, but something formless, something impossible to measure. To lose a future? She can think of little worse than that.

The door squeals when she taps against it, and she watches Cullen flicker from boiling outrage to cold horror in an instant, as if he's been suddenly shoved back into the body of that beaten-down man she'd seen in the war room, the one with his neck caught in a snare. Or a leash.

Words crowd behind her teeth, but if she opens her mouth she's afraid they'll come tumbling out in a jumble of useless alarm; that she'll sound like a child clinging to a knee. Nonsense built out of fear. And that's nothing Cullen needs right now.

Opening her mouth, she forms the word, that one soft word – _joli_ – but Cullen moves before she can get anything out. He goes by with a sodden breath, something like _forgive me_ staining his lips. He neatly side steps her hand, and goes out into the light, heavy-footed.

She makes to follow.

“Inquisitor.” Mirèio knows a warning when she hears one. 

“Seeker?” There is and isn't a blade shaped into her tongue; she is and isn't angry, furious.

“Cullen asked me to recommend a replacement for him.”

All the air goes out of her, cold dread smashing past her ribs to get into her chest, and just like that the wasps are dead. For a moment the world spins, and her thoughts drop away, all smashed to pieces, twitching stupidly. Words tumble out all unpolished. “I – can we stop him? Convince him otherwise?” 

_This is madness,_ beats away inside her head, over and over. _This cannot be happening._

“Cassandra...” 

“Mirèio,” Cassandra blurts out, the name so rarely used it sits strange on her tongue.

“What – where is this coming from?” Before she's finished, the answer is there, fully formed in the meat of her brain. She knows why. Did he take the time to clean the blood off his knuckles? Did he sit at his desk and wonder where she was? Did he wonder at her silence; make his choice alone, in the narrow yellow light cutting in from his window?

“Cullen feels he is no longer able to lead the men without...risking personal failure.” Cassandra glowers, staring at the little fire in the grate as if it has spoken the rudest of truths. She does not want to say these words to the Inquisitor, the woman stood before her who is _Inquisitor_ , and not that at all.

A sharp denial works its way out of Mirèio's throat. She spits it out as if fire hides between the line of her teeth. “That is absurd!”

Cassandra holds up a hand. “I know. As I said, he gives himself too little credit. There is no cause for his worry.” The fire crackles, tongueless, as if making space for her pleasant lie.

Mirèio doesn't bother asking why Cullen did not come to her – Hawke's blood still stains the edge of her cuff. Not the fleece of her glove, but her cuff. She doesn't even know if Cullen has cleaned the blood off his own knuckles, and Cassandra is watching her, measuring. “I know,” she says, bringing her hands up over her eyes, pressing, “I know.” 

If she says it enough, perhaps she'll believe it.

Mirèio wants to ask Cassandra just how much she knows – if she knows just how deeply she and Cullen are involved – but she hasn't even dug down into her own heart for those answers. No good reason exists – in this fragile little space made of sweet blue smoke and toothy silence – to give those answers over now, to someone who is not Cullen.

“It is not my place to assume,” Cassandra says, breaking through the stinging silence, both hands outstretched, “but if any can convince him otherwise, I believe it is you.”

Cassandra's belief is not a thing to be trifled with, or dismissed; Mirèio feels small under its weight. “Thank you, Cassandra.” She will not ask why, Cassandra does not deserve that. Neither does Cullen.

“Templars rarely speak of their suffering. Mages always have.”

Mirèio bristles, lips drawing back into the promise of a snarl. 

Cassandra stops, hands still spread in that oldest gesture of peace. “I know you and I do not see things in the same manner.”

“We come from different worlds,” Mirèio says. The fire in the grate hisses, and for a moment, the sky is black and the mages are screaming behind the door as the smoke chokes them all into stillness. “But sometimes it is easier not to be reminded.”

“Yes,” Cassandra smiles, “that is quite true.” She regrets it, that they do, that there is a gulf between them that their closeness in the field hasn't bridged over. But now hardly seems like the most opportune moment to bring the matter up. 

A stiff, awkward quiet slinks into the room, curling around their ankles to pick at their spines; Cassandra sighs, the day's warm promise now buried under heaps of history she'd wished to leave more dead than alive. How does she breach this subject with Mirèio? She has never been good with this, the measuring of what people need to know – what they _deserve_ to know. So she holds fast to what has worked so far: just talking, even if she is wrong.

“How much has Cullen told you of lyrium and its effects?”

Mirèio shrugs, hiding her shiver with the rolling of her shoulders. “Not much,” she replies. “Just the most – the most vital part: that it could kill him.”

“Ah.”

“Yes.”

“Do you know nothing more? Your Blood rules Ostwick, surely your family...”

“My mother forsook the templars nearly thirty summers ago. Our House makes no deals with the Carta, and, circumstances being what they are...” She laughs, a dull noise that scrapes against the quite. “We have had little contact with the Order in Ostwick. Out of necessity.”

“I see,” Cassandra nods. “That is...understandable. Then I will be plain – I trust you are not a cruel woman, and have only his best interests at heart. He cannot be allowed to step down, it would ruin him. Do not ask him to.”

“Never.” It isn't even a thought. Not for a moment. “I swear it, my lady.”

Cassandra's heart twists: a small brown and white bird falling from a great height, speckled wings bent. _I would know you better,_ she would like to say. _Why do we not know each other better?_

The Inquisitor makes to leave, to fly away like Cassandra's heart.

“Mirèio?” 

“Yes, Cassandra?”

“Is there some greater reason at work?”

Mirèio frowns, caught in the act of leaving. “In regard to what, my lady?”

“Why the Commander knows so much of you, and we do not?”

A little wind slips through the door, carrying dust and the sugar-sweet perfume of a slowly unfurling spring. Mirèio laughs softly, softly, as if she has just uncovered something wondrous, something frighteningly rare. 

Turning, she finds proud-eyed Cassandra lovingly painted all in black and red, soft in the way a blade cradled in silk is soft. She sighs. “Because he asked.”

Mirèio goes out the door quick, time nipping at her heels. 

She tells herself he will not leave, cannot leave; that he is not the sort of man who gets tired; who folds up into ever smaller squares until he is beaten down to pocket size, all the fight going out with that last folding press.

But she's no fool: being tired is not a possibility, it is an inevitability. Not a will or a won't, but a when.

It is always a _when._

Stupid, really, to believe anything but.

You cannot fight the tide.

You can't fight your own bones; your mind; your ghosts.

She should have _known._

She should have _listened._

If the when is now, she may have already lost.

~ * ~


	22. and all my war is done

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1\. This only took me a month. I am ridiculously proud of that.
> 
> 2\. This is roughly 20k long. I am sorry about that.
> 
> 3\. There is a very brief discussion of sexual assault, please be careful if you need to. 
> 
> 4\. This starts out kinda sad, but I dialed the hearts and flowers up to 11 for the end, so no worries.
> 
> 5\. I have an exam in the morning. I hope I survive.
> 
> 6\. I love all of you, you are all wonderful. 
> 
> 7\. Next chapter we get back to the porn, I promise.

~ * ~

The flat of her palm touches the door, her shadow breaches the room. There's so little light, and too much cold, enough to push a shiver down her spine. 

Before her eyes adjust to the dark, she hears a bellow, loud and ringing.

She freezes, stupidly, like a child caught thieving. Only she is meant to be here. Or, she hopes she is meant to be here. 

A dark shape comes hurtling towards the door frame. Twenty years of training buys her enough speed to dodge the flying blur, even as a sharp crack ruptures the silence: splintering, the tinkling of little metal bits loud against stone.

A box?

“I – Maker's Breath, Mirèio?”

Staring down at the ruins of a little wooden box, she looks up, looks at him; for some profoundly unfathomable reason, she wants to laugh. “Cullen?”

Cullen rears back as if slapped, or run through, blinking. As if he can't decide between one pain or another. “I – forgive me, I didn't...” 

If he doesn't move, he'll catch a'flame and be rendered down to ash in an instant. It's all there, just behind his teeth, everything. So much it makes him stupid, slow. Distantly, as if the world is moving one step behind him, he sees her hand come up as if to reach across the room, grab him up out of his stumbling, his words. But he's already moving, already trying to explain, always to explain.

“Mirèio...”

“You're not well, joli.” 

All at once, it's as if the weight of his own tower's stones have fallen onto his back: a relentless crushing pushing down on him, turning his bones to jelly, his heart into the flat edge of a coin. Then the pain comes. Raw and hot, it burns through his insides like tar: a relentless, rising wave trying to pry his skull apart with its fingernails. “I'm fi –” Black spots scuttle across his vision and the world heaves. He shakes his head; the spots eat up more of his world; his heart stutters. For a moment he fears it will burst, from pain or joy he can't decide between. 

That word. That name. Always that name: a little cup of love he cannot call love aloud.

The corner of his desk is all that saves him.

“Joli, you – ” 

Mirèio crosses the room quick, all silver jangling and a thundercloud glare. For the first time ever, Cullen curses her height. There's no space and he can hardly breathe; he waves her away, into stillness, battling with his seizing heart. 

He's so fucking tired of this, of being weak, of being _seen_.

“You shouldn't – I can't – give me a moment, please.” The wood beneath his hand squeals as he sags, all his weight pressed down onto the palm of his hand. For a breath or six time is odd, both sharp and crawling, as if something dark is walking across his face. Mirèio is only a few hand spans away, and the distance seems immense, and yet not enough. 

Too much.

He doesn't know what he'll do if she speaks to him so tenderly again. If _joli_ floats out across the air, the lilt of her tongue softening its edges as if she hopes it will soften his own – his heart might burst beneath his ribs, all red and sticky and raw.

Too much.

His name has no right to lie so gently in her mouth.

“Cullen.” All her hard tamped down to soft, she fixes her shoulders and waits. She is near enough to hear the grief tucked into his throat; it works through him like a needle-point: a coarse, ugly thread being pulled in and out with his breath.

He wants to tear himself open. Run his blade down the patchwork of his skin and see what he finds, see if he's blood and bone, or just dust. If there's anything human in him, or just the sickly song turning him inside out. Maker but he wants it to be done, to reach down past his own tongue and pull up all the ugly rage, all his bitter regret, all his shame. Wants to hand it to her whole, without having to say a single word.

“Cullen,” she repeats, as if she is far away. As if he is far away. 

_Look!_ he wants to shout, _Can't you see what I am? If you do not, you will hate me. One day. Soon. You will wake up, and remember what I am, and hate me._

He only wants her to understand, even if that isn't something he will ever truly deserve, even if it costs him that impossible future he dare not speak aloud. How could he, when he has done what he has done? When he'd spilled his guts to her only two nights ago, begged her not to give him only half, and then not two days later stood under the roots and the red threads where she'd pressed her lips to his skin for the first time, and told her Meredith fucking Stannard had been _right_.

_Maker, I'm such a fool._

He's so tired of himself; tired of these stinging thoughts; these hurts. And it's all right there, right under his tongue. Waiting for him to lay it all down. But it seems immense. Crushing. How to start? How should he put this out into the world? Bit by bit? All at once, in one ugly heave?

This is not chess. There are no manoeuvres he can attempt. No positions to start from. This is not a game; it shares nothing with laughter, or wine, or neatly arranged fruit.

And she is not lofty Andraste; she is not stone. Not holy. 

He starts small, stupidly, doggedly running ahead of the flood. “Forgive me, I should never have let this interfere.”

Mirèio assumes so smoothly neither of them blink. “The lyrium?” She gestures to the sorry remains, the little bits of metal. The draught has rolled away somewhere, she can't quite see where, only knows that it's gone.

“Yes.” Moving away from the desk, he stumbles: a rock-jointed golem brought back to life by the hand of a misguided creator. “And no, not just the lyrium.” He draws a breath, body creaking, failing around him; the lyrium has rolled under the bookshelf, its song loud, buzzing against his teeth. “Today, in the war room – Hawke.”

Mirèio makes a noise, the beginning of a familiar dance. Next she'll smile, all silver. 

“No,” Cullen snaps. “Don't – don't – you can't.” He struggles, mightily. “Please listen.”

The smile fades, and she is grey in more than just her eyes.

“I...” His hands are trembling; his throat a narrow reed he can barely press words against. As if he'll snap at any moment, knowing all his futures will wither on the vine. “What I said in the war room today, I meant it.”

Mirèio falters, and all the air between them crackles: a tender nest fed into an eager fire. Something unkind sharpens her mouth. 

“I meant it, and yet I did not. I – Maker – do you remember when you asked me of Kinloch Hold? That night in Halamshiral?”

Mirèio nods anger giving way to creeping dread so quickly it's as if there's a leak between her ribs, all her good sense seeping into her boots, with her heart. “I remember.”

Cullen draws a breath. Just one. “A mage called Uldred took over the Circle tower, filled it with blood magic and demons.” It takes little to send him spiralling back to that room in the belly of the tower. Just a thought, and he's on his knees again, begging for death, for silence. Learning to ignore the way blood smelled as it dried. Learning that he cannot trust his own eyes; his mind.

She swallows something that tastes like a split lip – a raw, sharp noise. Cullen's name bubbles up in her throat, the distance between him and her intolerable. Sense abandons her, along side her tongue. “Andraste,” she coughs up, the word a blunted instrument, “that explains...”

“Everything?” Cullen laughs: a black, hysterical sound, strange enough to turn him inside out, shock him out of his skin. Or back in, he's not quite sure. He springs away from his desk, veering towards the window; the light. Only he can't get away from his own body, can he? 

“They kept us in – in these,” Cullen searches, digging, grasping for words, “cages.” It's not quite like suddenly being naked, but it is close. “It felt like a cage. It was purple – I loathe purple.”

Mirèio wants to go to him so badly it burns right to the soles of her feet. But she can't. It would not help. If she has learned one thing of late, it is that you cannot chase shadows. You have to stand still, and let them come to you. 

“They, the demons, they pulled us out, one by one, until I was...” He hangs his head, touches the fever at his temples with the could tips of his gloves. “I was the last.” The fire in his head is sewn tight against the cold under his skin, as if his body can't decide between rage, or despair. Ten years. Ten fucking years seems to grow out of the mess of his insides until all that rage, all that misery, cracks his bones and drives out of him, out of the red heart of him.

“They tried to break me – my mind. After the others were dead.” His throat closes up as his mind seizes on the memory of Ywain's face as the demon had torn him from their crackling cage, torn him to red meat and white gristle; left him a pile of dark, slick ribbons on the floor. 

He'll never forget that smell; that colour.

It's so easy to go back there – the inside of his mouth tastes as if he'd never left.

“Fear has a smell, you know.” He can't look her in the face; can't hold her hunting eyes, no matter how soft. 

“I know,” Mirèio croaks, knowing exactly what will come next; what sort of pain.

Cullen breathes in short sharp bursts, clinging to the light, the blank window. “I – I wasn't the same after that. How could I have been?” The blank, dry smell of stone carries her scent to him. But his mind is all cut up, torn between the here of smelling oranges and bitter herbs, and the far away of blood and rot. He can't make sense of it. Can't pull it apart.

It's all knotted up, all tangled. And he has nothing sharp enough to cut through. Not even the cut of Mirèio's gaze, or the edge of her silence.

“The Hero of Fereldan saved me...two days after the Circle fell. I was delirious, half-starved. She pulled me out of that cage, gutted that demon, and I – ” He snarls, the weight of his words burning through his tongue. The memories in his mind are no more flesh than the ink drawings on his desk, but they are real, they are at his neck, at the soft hollow of his throat, reminding him: _you called her a thing. You said it was shameful, to want a mage of all things._

He spins around, heaving from window to desk to shadow-woman, racing, measuring the bars. His blood feels unruly in his body, as if he's being pulled, and pulled and pulled through the narrowest eyelet. 

Unhinged, driven away from the solidity of his desk, he has nothing to hold onto. “And in spite of all that, I – Maker – I thought she was a desire demon too.” He laughs, fails to wrestle down the shadow of hysteria lurking under the noise. “She saved my life, and I looked into her face and called her a _monster_ , and then I asked her to do monstrous things.”

“Wait.” Mirèio startles, her one rattling breath loud in the sudden quiet. “Desire demon? A desire demon – Maker, that was...that was what...” She can't seem to finish her sentence. Can't stand still. The world turns sharp, vertiginous – a killing bitterness in the red wash of her breathing heart. 

Cullen knows exactly where her thoughts have run to, where the cogs and gears in her mind have seized up, screaming. Why.

“Did she – ” he hears from a great, great gulf, echoing down into the dark. “Maker, did she?”

“No,” Cullen shakes his head, chest heaving. “No.” Reaching up, he taps his temple, the leather cold against the grasping fever under his skin. “She only ever touched me here. In my mind. She – it wasn't _touch_ , it was...” Cullen shudders, pinned. “She gave me things I wanted. Showed me what I'd never had the courage to seek for myself. Gave me things I had asked for, only never aloud.” 

“What,” Mirèio croaks, tongue splitting on the question, “did you ask of her?” She can't say his name, not the dear one or the soft one. There's nothing in her but aching.

“Something no templar should want: a home, a family. A life beyond the Order and its strictures. Love.” He laughs, a sodden sound wrung from pulpy, shredded lungs. “It seems I've never been a good templar. Not now, not then. Not ever. But I _wanted_ to be. I thought it was shameful – that I'd admired her, that I'd wanted her. A mage.”

The shadows between them flicker and grow: thick, knotted shapes brought to life by the light cast on them. And you can't fight shadows. Can't kill them. They are always there, always waiting. It is the light they wait for. The light is what gives them life; the very act of finding gives them strength.

“Shameful?” Mirèio says, the singular word denuded of all inflection.

“When the Hero found me I – Maker.” He swallows, pinned neat and peeled open by the misery on Mirèio's face. This is what he has feared, what he's run from, what he's shut his ears and his eyes and his heart again. And this he must endure. He has earned this. “I was ashamed of my feelings for her. Worse, I asked her to kill the surviving mages.”

Cullen watches her recoil because he must. Because she is owed that: his watching.

“How many mages survived?” Even in her own ears, her voice sounds hard; ugly. There is steel in her, fire in her belly, but even that isn't enough to kill the hurt in her. No matter how hard she tries beat the instinct bloody, she hears the voices behind the door, the heat of the flames at her back. 

If she falters now, pulls back, more than just her memories will burn.

“I can hardly remember,” Cullen says, voice quieter, lighter, than dust. “Perhaps thirty survivors, out of more than a hundred. I hardly remember their faces, they're all...” Cullen picks up air, moving it through his fingers as if he could sort through space, through time, find his memories. Find himself. “I can't see them. But they were young.”

The scowl on her face could wilt stone. “Were there children?”

“Yes.” So simple a word. Just a single syllable. But speaking it is enough to make him feel that rope, that knot resting on the nape of his neck. “I – Maker, Mirèio, I am so sorry. I never wanted this to hurt you. I –”

“This is not about me, Cullen.” The candles flare, their yellow faces bursting into little suns for a moment. Mirèio breathes, and the black earth song crawls away from her, sinking back into her bones. “After – did they leave you in the Circle? With the children?”

Cullen flinches, shame ticking up the back of his neck like the rotten hand of a Kirkwall summer. “No,” he breathes out. “No then they sent me to Greenfell first.”

“Greenfell?”

“Yes,” he sighs, hearing the little bells ring, the soothing noise of Sister Dorca's scrappy, clucking chickens, the sh-sh-sh of grain being tossed from a tin cup out in the yard, the laughter of the Mothers as they bent crackling reeds into baskets under the shade of ancient oaks. “My Knight-Commander thought I might recover there.”

Cullen laughs, the bitterness laid thick on his tongue a shock even to his own ears. 

“Did you?” Mirèio asks, already knowing the answer.

“No,” Cullen shakes his head, “and yes.” He flexes his fingers, turning back to the narrow window. “In little ways, I suppose. Meaningless ways.”

Mirèio frowns, the fire in her belly squeezed down to coals. “Meaningless?”

“I stopped waking up screaming,” he says, flat as a pounded-down nail. He laughs again, a bitter-black sound. “And then they sent me to Kirkwall. Into that madness. I could hardly breathe there, hardly slept. The mages hated me, and I hated them.”

_Stop laughing!_ she wants to shout. _Stop this,_ she'd like to plead. But that is a lie, even in her own mind. What she wants is to run. To talk to a god she has never loved. To put her head into a bucket of water and scream until the water around her boils. 

The only thing she can say is, “Why did the Chantry transfer you to Kirkwall, Cullen?” Scivias croons to her, the blood red gleaming set into the hilt eating up all the space in her chest, all her anger folded back into her ears by the red under her hand.

She hardly hears him say, “You know why.” She doesn't miss the way he snarls as if there's blood on his jaws, words forming around a broken arrow in his mouth.

“Because you were dangerous. Because you could not see the difference between a mage and a demon.” The anchor snaps, hissing; she wants to bare her teeth; she wants to grab him by the gorget amnd shake him until he looks at her, until he understands. “You thought we were all the same.”

_Do you know how many mages I made Tranquil?_ The memory strikes at her, flying at her face with naked claws. 

“Yes,” he nearly howls, “I hated them,” Cullen spits, as if tasting the words for the hundredth time, and still being surprised at their violence. He can't look at her, only the window. 

Mirèio has never considered herself stupid. Or naive. But Cullen's words strike like a gore, digging into her deep. She should have been prepared for this. This shouldn't hurt. She knew.

Maker, she knew.

And yet, to hear him say _I hated them_ is so much worse than she could ever have imagined. So much harder. If she could breathe a little better, if she were another woman's daughter, and her life had been different, there might have been tears.

Grief is a strange, slippery emotion; Cullen's never understood his, even if he'd always known its source. Some days, it's a wound he picks at; other days, it is a blade he holds in spite of the blood, and the way it cuts. Today he holds it close, and hope its cutting will save him.

“Maker, Mirèio, those first few years...” Drawing the back of his hand over his mouth, Cullen breathes, hides his eyes. “I – I could hardly tell the difference between friend and foe. The whole world seemed overrun with demons and blood magic. I leapt at shadows; balked at any kindness shown to me by mages. I fell in line, Mirèio. I – Maker save me – I let my Knight-Commander...” 

He presses on. It feels as if he's burning alive. 

Between the stone floor, the desk, the bars of shadow and yellow bowls of candlelight, there is a killing sort of silence. The kind of silence one walks into by accident. The kind that picks up all the little hairs on arms, and chills the backs of necks. 

Cullen looks up, out over the silence, and finds enough in Mirèio's face to knock the air out of his body. If there was anything he could give to ease that look off her face, he would without thought. If the price were all the little bones in his hand, or all the blood in his veins, he would.

But he has no magic.

“I stood there and watched Meredith – forgive me I should not have said she was right. That there was any justification in her actions.”

“Why did you?” Grit crunches beneath her boot; she looks up to the soot-blackened beams, the dust, water stinging her eyes. “After everything we spoke of – why?”

“Because she gave me purpose,” he says to the stone floor. “And I wanted to be angry. Some days it felt like that anger was all that saw me through. If I was not angry, then I would have to – would have to admit all that I'd told myself since Kinloch had been a lie. Worse than a lie.”

“You were alone, wounded.” More grief, pain heaped on pain. She doesn't know where to put it all. Where to draw the line. If she wants what she's just said to be true because it is _true_ , or because it makes this easier to swallow. 

“Yes, I suppose,” Cullen replies, eye still cast down. 

“No – you were.” Mirèio pauses, chewing on her words. Just under her ribs, she can feel a scratching, straining thing. A bundle of words she needs to yank out into the light. “You,” she stumbles, understanding at last. “Cullen, you trusted that snake and she fed you to your own wolves. She didn't do it without a thought to its uses. Hatred, fear – it isn't so simple, Cullen. She knew what she was doing. You had a use, you had a want. She had use for you, and could give you what you wanted.”

Cullen looks up, caught between bars of shadow and late-day light. 

“And we will do anything for those who can give us the things that we want.” Mirèio gulps in air, walks back through those early years when the wound had pulled when she'd turned too quickly, when she'd looked to the sea and felt her heart strain in its self-made cage. “And what greater ally could she have asked for, than a man as wounded as you were?”

“I let her, Mirèio. Do not try to soften this.”

“Cullen...”

“No,” he pushes out between clenched teeth. “No don't, don't – I am so tired, Mirèio. I am tired of being tired. Of being ashamed of my own mind.” The words are out and he is falling, flying, smashing into rocks and climbing, climbing. The Revered Mother in Greenfell had always told him that unburdening was good for the spirit. Things kept silent, unsung, were like poison. Cullen is not so sure. All he knows for certain is this: he is ruined and saved, all in one breath.

With more urgency, “Cullen.” But he hardly hears.

“I am tired of being afraid of what will come out of my own mouth. Sometimes – Maker sometimes I don't know where it comes from,” he snaps. “Sometimes it's as if there's someone else using my tongue. It's so easy, Mirèio. It's so easy to be that man again. And I want him gone,” he bellows. “I want him _dead_ and I don't know how – ”

She cannot say _I want that too_. “You speak as if you are two separate men. Is that not proof enough, joli?” Struggling, she picks at her words, at the snarled thread in her mind. The unsaid fills her, presses against her.

“No. No it is more than that. I mean, I wish, no, Maker, I _need_ you to to help me understand, Mirèio. Why would you want a templar? How can you, as a mage, want someone who has done what I have done?”

This is what ruined her the first time: honesty. She'd kept it so close to her, treated it as if it was precious, as if she would run out. Never spent too much of it. Never gave it away as if she could expect it to be returned. “I made a mistake. I – ” 

Cullen yelps as if burnt, dog-caught in that white collar. Again.

“No.” Mirèio holds up both hands, placating, eyes wide and alarmed. “No not with you. Before you.”

Cullen stills, but his body leans, muscles bunched as if preparing to flee. He only just remembers to breathe. 

Mirèio's head droops, her neck bends; there's no sight in Thedas Cullen hates more.

“Those first few years after the woods.” She breathes in once, twice: short, sharp, small. “I made choices in anger, and many more out of fear. I used to wake screaming too.” She says it with a smile, as if to soften a blow. As if it will hurt less, if she says it softly enough.

Cullen nods, the whole of him turned to her, shivering like plucked strings. 

“And then I met Asha,” she says. Laughing, her voice thick with the sort of grief only time can blunt, Mirèio sighs. “It was like waking up to the sun. It was as if I had forgotten what that felt like. I loved her, Cullen. Truly.” The grey in her eyes washes to seawater, to a colour like gentle spring mornings when fog was a friend to green buds, and smaller things welcomed its shelter.

In this moment, he doubts there is anything harder in this world or the next than to hold her gaze. But he does. He keeps his eyes on hers, and does not look away.

“But I was stupid, and young,” Mirèio says, grin tamped down at the edges. “I hadn't tended to my wounds, and I thought the world meaner than it was. I thought I could not live with being two different people in two different worlds. And because I would not give up my Right, or my Name, or my Blood...” Mirèio shrugs, shaking herself as if trying to pull away from something old, and wretched. “I told her we could not be. I hurt the only person I had ever loved, because I was too stubborn, too beaten down to see a way for either of us. I never gave either of us the chance to try.”

“Mirèio,” Cullen breathes. “I...”

Soft as a lamb, she says, “I will not make that same mistake again. Because I can live with being afraid – I have learned to. And so have you. And so we will either live better for it, or die like the animals it tries to make of us.”

“How can you tolerate it – being afraid like that?”

“Because the world will do it for me, and I will not allow that. I'll not let this world beat me around the head until I bend. I refuse. So it will be on my terms. My reasons. My choice.”

Cullen breathes through his teeth, shivering like a dog on the chain. His arms ache, though he holds nothing. “We should not,” he croaks. “You should not...”

“Look at me,” she commands.

His gaze skitters away, shoulders curled and hands twisted together. 

“Look at me,” she insists.

The stone floor can't absolve him, or forgive him. He is not certain she can either; he looks up, finds her whole, and caught in the light. The desk not so wide a gulf between them.

“I know what cruelty looks like. That templar in the woods...he knocked me down and cut me open like I wasn't even human. I had to watch him do it.” She points to her face; her mouth a grim baring of long, white teeth. “I saw his face,” comes hissing out, “and only his face. He took something from me that I could not heal.”

“Mirèio – Mirèio, wait...”

“I crawled through the dirt like a dog, a _dog_!” she snarls, bites, gnashes. “Held my own fucking guts inside with my own fucking hand. I – I can't remember who was screaming, it all runs together and I can't –” She swallows, her throat as ruined as a red mile of the Emprise. “Cullen – I know what cruelty looks like. I know how ugly all of this is. What it does to us when it touches us. Do you honestly think I would tolerate your company if I saw any of that in you?” 

_There,_ he thinks. _Oh there, there is the truth._ He wants to believe. He is desperate to believe. Whether that makes him a fool or not, he hasn't the heart to decide.

“But I was cruel!” Like a dog with a rabbit in its jaws, he heaves, shakes his head. If he bites down hard enough, perhaps only what is soft will survive. “I was – Maker there were so many in Kirkwall who needed, who deserved – I failed them, Mirèio! Left them to knights who hated them even more than I did.”

The light from the window hits Mirèio like a scythe, cutting a sharp line of gold over her chest and neck. When she moves, the light crawls farther up. She says, “Do you want to be that man again?”

“What?” Cullen bleats out, reeling. “No.” Grief rolls over him, smashing him into a handful of moments and a handful of breath. “No, never.”

“Do you believe I would trust you, sleep beside you, touch you, if I still believed you were anything like that man in the Gallows?”

He has to look away. “No.”

“Then listen here. Listen to me, Void take you! You will not do me this disservice again. More than that, you will not do _yourself_ this disservice. You are not that man, Cullen.”

Cullen opens his mouth, protests already bubbling up.

“Let him go,” Mirèio presses. “For the love of the fucking Maker, for the sake of who you are now, and who you are trying to be, fucking let him go. Joli, I am begging you, let him go. Let him die.” The urge to reach out and shake him takes root in her, but she's still frozen. Still caught in old places, and old wounds.

“How?” Cullen roars, hands fisted tight in his hair, clawing. “How?” he bellows. “When all that I remember of Kinloch is blood, is, is shame and fear and my own vile words. I cared for my charges, I cared for her, and I asked her to slaughter them. All of them! There were children in the tower, Mirèio. Children!” 

She's never rested well in that place called helplessness. Never enjoyed being asked to kneel; to surrender. But she'll fight to the last, to that most bitter of endings, if it means she'll keep what's hers. And if she has to, she'll fight him too, even if she must fight with one part of him to save the other. “Do you remember that night on the battlements? When I told you I couldn't sleep well, couldn't reconcile what I'd done to the templars?”

Cullen nods, shying away as if passing his hand over a wick. 

Coming forward, she advances one foot after the other, until she's got her hands on the desk, fingers in the pool of light halving the world into fields of absolute dark. “The Maker and I are not fast friends, joli, but if I know one thing – if I have learned one thing from the world beyond southern Thedas it is this: if one awful deed was enough to condemn a soul entirely, there would be no one left in this world.” Her fists thump against the wood, a loud, hollow sound. “Look at what I did to the templars. My choice led to their corruption. How many families curse my name? How many devout Sisters would not spit on me if I was on fire? I left the Chantry's devoted soldiers to rot, Cullen! Am I spared their scorn because I saved others? Because I believe I saved others more deserving than they were? Who am I to make that choice?”

“I...” Philosophical debate has never been his strongest passion. There were always too many details, too many failings of logic, or the heart. He could never find a satisfactory answer, and after all the talking, all the endless running in circles, there was still a knot. Still a kernel of dissatisfaction that could not be dissolved. “I don't know, Mirèio.”

“Try,” she jabs. 

He takes a breath, and thinks of dusty tomes on dusty shelves, of pulling one down and moving his lamp a little closer – so he could read in the dark, hunched against the spines of all the knowledge he hadn't yet stolen for himself. “I say you are justified. The templars proved they could not uphold their oaths. They proved faithless, loyal only to their Name, and not their Purpose.”

Mirèio smiles, a sour, leering grimace, and says, “Who are you to decide that?”

Cullen startles as if struck. “I was one of them once, I know what their purpose was. What mine was. They chose...”

“Yes,” Mirèio says, “because they chose. That's all that mattered to me. Most templars, the ones not given to the Chantry, they were permitted to choose what they became, what they stood for, what they allowed. No mage chooses to be what they are. They only get to choose how they end, and often not even that. I let the templars die because they chose.” She laughs, the copper bands in her hair rattling. “Terrible, isn't it?”

Cullen leaves the window, moves until he comes to the edge of his desk; presses his hands down to lean out, closing the distance between them. “No,” he speaks, almost inaudibly. “I understand.”

Mirèio laughs again, only it isn't laughter, isn't grief, but something strange and small and naked beyond reason. “You offer me compassion without hesitation. Hand it over with barely a thought otherwise.” 

Smiling, she reaches out slowly. Gives him time to move away. But he doesn't flinch, or pull back. He stays still, and quiet; eyes dark between the fall of his lashes.

Her fingers curl around the line of his jaw, one resting at the thudding fork of his pulse. “So why none for yourself?” she asks. “If you would not condemn me for what I have done. If you would have me look beyond the terrible deeds of the Order, and I would have you look beyond the harm done by blood mages and those who consort with demons, why do you expect that I should reject you because of what you have done?”

She would like to say: _We talked about this, months ago, and I thought it settled._ But who is she to decide when he is healed? When he is done with his past or his pain? That is for him to decide.

Cullen blinks, feels her fingers against his jaw, the warmth of her skin against his in little dots like the distant points of immovable stars. “Because you are a mage,” he says, breathing out in a long, slow draw; aching. “You had no choice in that. You are what you are. As you have said before, as I have said before: I had a choice. I chose to hate, to fear, to ignore the shadows on the magelings' faces, chose to ignore the cries in the night. I chose silence over justice, over compassion. Again and again. For years. I know what kind of man I am, Mirèio.”

This time she does not smile. “Cullen, I allowed the mages in Ostwick to suffer for years. Because I was a coward. Because I was not willing to give up what freedom I had. For a thousand reasons that boil down to the sorry excuse of I did not want to die. You know what I am capable of. You've seen me fight. I could have taken that tower apart stone by fucking stone. I didn't. I – ”

“No!” Cullen interrupts, snarling. “No you could not have.”

Mirèio smiles. 

“They would have killed you. Forty seasoned templars. They would have forced you to take the tower floor by floor. They would have waited for you to exhaust yourself simply getting through their doors.” The thought is poisonous. Makes him lurch from agony to agony, imagining her broken on foreign stones. “They would have...” He cannot say the word. Just the shape of it in his mouth brings bile up. 

“So I am to be forgiven? By who? The mages who suffered while I flew away to safer harbours? The ones I pulled from the fire after it was far too late?”

His reply is a stubborn, mulish thing, caught in the mud of his regrets. “Yes. You had no choice.”

Her laughter is not kind. “We all have choices. What would Stannard have done to you, had you chosen help the mages before she'd gone mad?”

“She would have turned me out of the Order.” Cullen frowns, worrying at his lip. “I would have been like Samson.”

“And then you would have helped no one – would not be here now, in a position to help countless others,” she says, the anchor in her palm crackling to life before sinking back down into silence. 

Cullen meets her gaze, still frowning mulishly, clinging onto his meagre high ground. “I would not blame you. What I did, and what you did – they are not equal. Mirèio, I – ”

The anchor snaps, rousing like a wicked little star on a dark horizon. “No, you say that because you wish to believe it. Not because it is true. You failed. I failed. The whole fucking world has failed, Cullen, for centuries.” Her voice ticks up, the deep waters of her anger rising. “You and I – joli we are not better because we suffered appropriately, but because we fucking lived to try again.”

Again, she steals the breath out of his lungs with her words, as neatly as slitting the belly of a fish. He lets her anger touch him, truly. Feels it behind his eyes. Tastes it in his mouth, sewn up with the roil of her magic. Cullen has known rage like hers. It is the sort that kills empires. Razes towers. Breaks chains. Turns souls into greater shapes than they ever believed possible. Calls a god to mortal flesh like a moth to naked flame. “How can you say these things, Mirèio, and not understand why I – ”

_I love you,_ he wants to say. _Maker, I love you._ He has lived with this truth long enough it no longer surprises him. 

Cullen watches Mirèio's anger burn down. Watches her smile wick back to life, not the crooked, silver one, but the quiet one. The one so strange and gentle it has more substance with dream than waking life. 

“If I was to expect all of southern Thedas to change overnight, even you would call me a fool.” She joins her fingers, holding his cheek in the cradle of her palm. “Why do you demand so much of yourself, so quickly? You've climbed a bloody mountain, Cullen, and you don't even see it. No one wakes up one morning and decides that they are better than they were before. That is not a choice you get to make.”

A little wind sweeps in, carrying the heavy silence away, a tender spring lurking in the dirt soughing over the stones, and the shadows, and the light.

Cullen sighs, breathing in the heavy air. “Mirèio, you make it sound so simple. How am I to forgive myself?” The hand on his cheek is not her right but her left. The unmarked one. She smells of dirt, and the affable salt of sweat, the sharper notes of her magic drawn deep inside, echoing. Like that night in the forest, under the changeable sea of her construct birds and their little, shivering wings. Like those hours in the greenhouse, in the abundance of a thing called _sanctuary_.

“Forgive?” She laughs, a little puncture of noise in the little space between them. “Listen, joli – the best lesson I learned from my own stupidity with Asha is that you cannot ask for forgiveness for the things you have done, because whether you have it or not, it changes nothing.”

“What?” He doesn't mean to sound quite so much like one of her lost sheep, but he can't help the bleating shock in his question. Her other hand comes up, viper-green sealed away by leather. Comes to rest on his shoulder, fingers digging into the fur. 

“Forgiveness does not undo what you did. All it does, is allow you to live, Cullen. The past is gone, joli.” The armour is in her way, but that hardly matters, she squeezes anyway, grips him tight and shakes him gently, as if to knock his self-inflicted, stinging wounds clean out of his body. 

Cullen grunts, leaning into her touch.

“The mages you wronged, the people you hurt? They are gone, dead, tranquil. You cannot have forgiveness from them. It can't be given. It doesn't exist, Cullen. What you have is a chance to be better. And you are, better. You are a good man.” The last she whispers, even though it is not a secret. Only, if she says it too loudly, he will refuse. 

Cullen refuses anyway. On principle. “No.” 

“Yes,” Mirèio insists, shaking him a little harder, “you are. I should have told you before, more often.” The laughter is a surprise, soft as the jingling bells she wore 'round her wrists when they danced under Josephine's cedar bowers. “You are stronger than you can see, and you have done the impossible.”

Cullen frowns, the corner of his lips tasting the salt and dirt still clinging to her gloves. “What do you mean, Mirèio?” Much that he once thought impossible is possible now, and the wealth of his choices as to which impossibility he might believe is staggering; dizzying. 

“Ah joli mine,” she smiles, running her thumb along the tender ribbon of skin under Cullen's jaw. “After all this, after that demon and the Circle, Stannard and her Gallows, you managed to keep that soft heart of yours alive.” 

“What? I don't...” Cullen balks, tries to blink away the light; the stinging water in his eyes. The tips of his fingers tingle, his heart strains as if he is drowning, as if something unbearable is welling up inside him with the intention of choking him. Only it isn't water, but something he can't name. Can't shape. It only is. Pressed in and tangled up tight in his innards, coiled between his ribs like so much red thread. 

He can't decide if he wants to run, to burst, to break, to fly into her arms and let the welling out. Let her Bear and Hart take his tears. 

Her voice is tight, trembling on the same sharp wire. She doesn't bother to hide it. “Cullen,” Mirèio whispers, “if you hadn't kept that part of yourself alive, you would not have come back at all. You wouldn't be here, now. You wouldn't see.”

“You make it sound so simple,” Cullen chokes out. “It can't _be_ that simple.” He doesn't dare laugh. If he does, it won't come out as laughter. “Not when – sometimes I feel as if I am still there, in that cage. In the Gallows. It comes back so clearly. I – Maker, I can hear myself. See what I would have done.”

Mirèio's grip on him tightens, the red-black fur crushed between her long fingers. 

“I do not know if it is some fault of mine, or if it is the lyrium...but the lack of it makes it worse.” The words are easier now, less killing, less ugly. But it is a difference of inches, not miles. “And I...” He leans out a little more, lingering in the way her palm moulds to his skin, in the warmth of her touch, and sun on his shoulders. “I am afraid I will always be haunted by Kinloch, by what I did. What I said. What I allowed. That there will be another day like today, and you will grow tired of forgiving me.”

Mirèio frowns, opening her mouth to interject. His words are not foreign to her, more like familiar echoes in a deeper voice. “Joli,” she tries.

“I should be taking it. It would be easier if I were.”

Anger claps over her face, bright as a fork of lightning, burning them both. “Is that truly what you believe?”

“The Inquisition – ”

“Damn the Inquisition!” Mirèio bellows. “Is this – is taking lyrium what you want?” She grips his shoulder hard, fingers biting into the steel of his second skin, a fistful of scruffy fur the immediate victim of her outrage.

He finds his eyes closing without thought, his world narrowing down to the sound of her breathing and his; the heat of her hand against his neck; the unruly lurching of his struggling heart. 

Breathing out long and slow, as if walking through ages, lives, and all their mingled dust he says, “No.” 

He remembers stumbling down slick steps. Remembers the loud clatter of oars; the relentless beating of waves echoing in his ears; Bethany's eyes; the way her too-thin arms clutched the sides of the little boat as if she'd been trying to hold herself together for so long she had forgotten how to let go. 

How she'd looked at him as if she expected him to step out and walk over the sea, just to drag her back to the bars and the rubble and the dark.

He remembers being too beaten-down to move, lyrium-craving working him over as gently as a saw splitting bone; Hawke's laughing goodbye, how it skinned him alive as he watched the man haul the last of his family away. How he'd stood there until they were nothing more than a little lantern bobbing farther and farther out into dark water. 

While Anders smuggled the last of the Gallows' enchanters out through the city gates, shepherding them away into the smoky, ravaged dark.

There is a part of him that would like to tell Mirèio he let them go, but that would be a lie. That would not soften anything. Would not spare him. Would not make him seem better in her eyes, if only for a moment. 

Does he want to go back? Be that dead-eyed man on the slick, black stairs? Does he want to lose hours, years, tongue, skin and heart and eyes and mind, to a voiceless song?

“No, it's not what I want.”

“Good,” Mirèio chokes out, her mouth twisting to make space for a sudden, overwhelming relief. “Good,” she repeats, as if she is convincing them both. 

Cullen laughs, a concession to the ache in his chest. Just a little sound, small enough to grow and wither in the same breath, in the little space between them. The hand in his fur flexes, as if she can't decide how much he will allow. Can't decide what she wants. What he wants.

“Understand,” Mirèio says, urgency sharpening her tongue, “your choices are yours again. No one will ever take that from you again. You have the right to choose. You always did, no matter what that dead dog in Kirkwall told you. What your Order told you.” 

_What the Maker told you,_ she leaves silent, hanging sharp and unspoken in the cold, light-filled air.

Her words smash him apart, move from bone, to ligament, to heart, with all the kindness of a hammer. Dumbfounded, he stares at her, at the bow of her mouth and the hook of her nose. “How,” he stumbles, “how can you say these things? I – Mirèio...” 

Covering his eyes, his mouth, Cullen breathes. The ghost of decade's worth of swallowing back the salt rears up, a terrible towering in the meat of his body. 

He wants to weep

He wants to _cry._

He wants to go to his knees, press his forehead to the stone, and cry.

Ludicrous, to be so ruined by so few words. Again.

“You know,” Cullen croaks, a watery hiccough prying its way out of his battered lungs, “Meredith died believing the Maker would reward her for what she had done. At the time, I wasn't far enough away from it all to see just how mad that was. The Maker asks us to protect the weak and the frail, the ones least able to protect themselves. The Lady died in service of that cause. I wondered, for years after, if the Maker would have approved of what we'd done, not just in Kirkwall, but in other places too. Would Andraste approve of _anything_ we'd done in Her name?”

“Ah,” Mirèio grimaces. The bright copper banding her braids catches the light, flinging their sun-spun threads over Cullen's wan face. “You are asking the wrong person, joli.”

“Surely not.” Cullen's laugh fits oddly in his mouth; she'd said as much before, in quieter ways. He wonders if she has been avoiding it. “Do you...” Struggling a moment, he wonders at his own tongue. “Is that why you hate what we have named you?”

Mirèio shrugs, gaze slipping away from the thorny question in his eyes, and then back again. Sighing, she says, “Are you so surprised? Most mages have struggled with the Maker and His Chantry. His Bride.”

“Have you?” he asks, softly, knowing the answer before he asks. There's never been cause to say it aloud.

Mirèio smiles. “You know the answer to that.” She watches Cullen nod, sorrow tightening the lines round his eyes, and the rest of his questions slip away. “But He and I...” Blowing out a gust of air, the noise inscrutably blank, she says, “All that I've cared to keep is what a Seer in Llomerryn shared with me.”

Cullen doesn't have time to ask her why she sought guidance in Llomerryn, or when. He's fairly certain he knows the answer to both questions. 

Mirèio leans forward again, crossing the pool of noonday light. “She told me all the Maker and his Bride desire from us is here.” Bringing her hand up, she taps his forehead, two fingers pressing down with such exquisite care, Cullen cannot keep the tears behind his lashes. Her hand moves, falls down to his plackart, and she taps once, twice, just over his heart. “And here.”

Cullen's lungs seize up, and he can't get air, only hold his breath in his mouth like a little thimble full of grief. The sound of his aborted breath is loud in the silence, its only competition is Mirèio's knock against his plackart.

It's just a sound, a little, hollow note. But it stings. Digs deep into the marrow of him, past the red; the sour blue. He bites his tongue, choking back a sob as if it is just another thing he must swallow. 

Mirèio smiles, but it's a near thing, a thin thing. “I do not care what some madwoman with the Sword of Mercy clapped on her fucking chest told you. I don't give a cup of dust for the edicts of an old woman elected by other old women, weighted to the earth by their scripture and their dogma and their rote. I don't care, and I never will. All I have ever wanted, is to be able to choose, Cullen. So...”

Caught in the dust, in their mingling breathes, their mingling lines, she leans into him as if pulled by an inexorable force. She leans in, quiet as bending grass, and then steps away.

Cullen jolts forward, body protesting, shuddering as if his bones are at war with his sorry excuse for a heart.

She smiles again, a little stronger than before, and holds out her arm, palm up, fingers spread.

“I trust you to decide.”

Somehow, he makes it around the desk. Not quite lurching, but near enough. He cuts through the daylight puddles as if half of him is trying desperately to break through the ceiling and touch the sky. As if he could just do that, if only he tried hard enough. 

“I trust you to choose.”

Reaching out, he lays his hand in hers. The world doesn't seize around him. He doesn't ascend to the Maker's side. He's not forgiven, or saved.

He only breathes.

Just breathes.

She grips his hand tight. Cullen looks up into her face and finds a familiar welcome there. Wordlessly, he stretches up, holds the tender curl of her mouth against his own, as if slipping the misplaced yellow stamen of a lily back into its white cup. 

“There now, joli,” she whispers, squeezing tight.

He knocks into her chest hard enough to make her stumble, but her arms close around him strong, tightly, and he digs, pressing himself against her: a bird flying, flying to its stone tower home. 

“There now,” she repeats, mouth pressed against the rumpled gold of his curls. 

The day is not done. They aren't finished talking, and the ugly things between them are no more buried than the dead things soughing against Crestwood's shore. But right now, this is enough. Enough sunlight. Enough breath. Enough warmth.

One body against another, one breath against skin. That is enough.

Cullen breathes out. Mirèio hums.

Time drags, both a kindness and a cruelty. 

It gives him space to think. To dig up all the coins he'd tucked away, the fragile seeds he'd hoped to see flower. All those tender, fledgling hours when he come awake with her at his back. When he'd known the heat of her breath against his cheek. When she'd pressed him into the pallet, and made his mouth a red song to his need and hers. 

The question slips out, runs passed his teeth before he can leash it. “What if I cannot endure it? What if the need becomes too great. What if I truly cannot serve?” 

Mirèio breathes against him, with him, quiet in the light, listening to the cracks in his lungs; listening to him struggle to seal them up.

“Joli.”

Carefully, slowly, she reaches out, picks up his wrist, peeling back the cuff of his glove. He never moves when she does this. Only waits. Smiling, she presses her mouth to his skin: tenderness shaped against the soft inside of his wrist. “Let me be arrogant for a moment?” 

Cullen laughs. Well and truly laughs. Swallows his tears and his struggling heart. Her grin is a stubborn, hardy thing caught in the light of noonday. He doubts he'll ever tire of seeing it.

Two fingers tapping over her Bear and Hart, she says, with a wide, white grin, “I choose to believe you can.”

Cullen finds it ludicrous that he wants to laugh, again. That he can breathe at all under the weight of her regard, and the surety of her words. Then again, she's always been pressing things into his hands, always offering. Take this. Hold this. This is yours. “You are a reckless woman, Mirèio Trevelyan.”

_Choose._

_Decide._

Untangling from him, she walks a step back, two. Just enough for the wind to come between them. Her eyes are alive, in that naked, unbearable way of hers, all road-dust and the stink of dragon-blood. The same look that makes Cullen's heart shiver, that makes him feel small, and yet so much bigger than he can imagine; more whole. “Mirèio.”

Clapping a hand over her Bear and Hart, she bows. “Ever at your service, joli.”

Cullen laughs. “Liar.”

“Not entirely,” she says, resettling the folds of her tabbard.

The Order had tried its best beat his world down to corners. To a little square and a tall tower. To tell him what he was. Who he was. But more often than not it seems as if he is cursed to run in circles until the world bursts apart at the seams, forever remembering each of his failures. Some days he believes forever still it might not be enough time – either to forgive himself, or forget.

But perhaps that is the nature of living. The world only asks that you live, nor for how long, or how well. Only that you live.

Perhaps this is the point, the blade he can take up. It took him ten years to learn how to break threads. How can he expect to make himself anew in only three?

“Cullen?” Mirèio says, expression softening. 

“Forgive me,” he murmurs, caught by a sudden hesitation. Has he shown her too much? Or not enough? Is this – 

“Cullen,” Mirèio repeats, face full of a certain fondness Cullen cannot have enough of, no matter how often he sees her wear it so plainly. “I can hear you thinking yourself to death from here.”

Cullen laughs, the noise squeezing out of heavy lungs. “Am I that obvious?”

“Yes,” she replies. “Often. Consistently, I'm afraid.”

“Ah.” He doesn't know quite what to say to that.

To Mirèio, it feels as if they have both slid off the map, and are stumbling around in the chalky, poorly drawn margins. No sea or stars. No green earth and good wind. Just a hazy, maddening uncertainty, as if every other step forward could be their last. “Joli, we do not have to finish today. If you – do you need time? Would you like for me to go?”

“No,” he laughs, bewildered. “And yes,” he sighs. “I only need a little time to...” Cullen gestures to his head, to the nest of his unruly mind, “to sort things out, I suppose.”

Mirèio nods, and Cullen can see no disappointment on her face, in her. Just miles and miles of brute-strong Trevelyan pride. As if she is _proud_ of him. For a moment, he wants to ask her as much. 

“Mirèio?”

“Sí, joli?” Just to see him smile, she would call him by that love name until he forgot his first.

“If we were not involved – ”

Mirèio laughs, a barb-sharp exclamation. 

Cullen holds up a hand, and she goes quiet. “If we were not involved, what would your answer to the lyrium be? You cannot deny that I would be of more use, were I to take it again.”

Anger is the simplest thing to grab hold off, so she does. She grabs hold and shakes it, breaks its neck before it breaks past her teeth. “Joli,” she admonishes, “do you honestly believe that would make a difference at all? Did you think that was all just noise?”

Cullen frowns, shoulders rolling, pauldrons flashing; the back of his neck itches, the pulsing ache in the root of his spine is still there, doggedly crawling up to the base of his skull. The craving isn't done with him yet, pulling his eyes down to the bookshelf, and the shadows between its legs.

Watching him fight with himself, she sees him look, and realization claps her upside the head so hard she blinks with the force. “Wait – can you? Do you know where the vial has gone?”

The little vial's song is a pulse in the back of his head, a beating heart far slower than his own.

“Cullen?”

He blinks.

“Cullen!”

He blinks, and sound rushes back into the world; the little vial's crooning dims. Cullen shakes himself, coughing as if to dispel dust from his lungs. It doesn't work, and Mirèio's attention doesn't waver.

“Where is it?”

The words are out of his mouth before he can think better of it. “Under the book shelf.” 

Caught in the light, in the mouth of the door, and noon's rude, red-gold wash, Mirèio makes a noise shaped like that first breath you take before diving into roaring surf, or bristling spears.

He sees her; the ferocious tilt of her shoulders. “Mirèio, you needn't...”

“No,” she snaps, moving over to the bookshelf to bully the little vial back out into the light, “no more of this. Listen here, Commander Rutherford, who is also simply Cullen, who is also mine. Enough. You wish to know what I would do?” 

Cullen nods, says, “Yes,” without a single fracture in his voice. She brushes past him quickly, the vial winking in her hand, and he remembers, in a vicious burn of crude, uncomplicated lust, that she seemedmade for war. And Maker, she excelled at it.

Without a word, she reaches the narrow window. Prying up the rusted latch, she opens the lead-paned glass and hurls the vial out so forcefully it whistles as it falls.

“Mirèio!” Cullen nearly shouts, reeling. The crooning is gone, wiped away with such a dizzying suddenness, his stomach heaves. He blinks once, twice, as if to make sense of what has just happened. Stupidly, he says, “That was valuable.”

“And one day I will rule all of Ostwick,” Mirèio snorts. “What is a handful of lyrium to me, joli? What is it to me, when measured against your life?” 

A year and a half he has known her; half that time he has known her mouth, and the bare grace of her thighs; the quieter laughter; the press of her nose against the nape of his neck. And in the face of all that, she can still stop him dead with handful of words. Steal his in the same breath. “Mirèio...”

“I do not know enough of what lyrium does – so I am at a loss, joli, as to why you would – ” She waves her marked hand, feet itching to pace. Barking is more her forte, not lectures, but if he wants one, she will give him one to put all others to shame. 

“The world has taken so much from us. It will take more, if we are not careful.” Laughter singing like the sharp edge of a blade, she tucks her teeth away, falling into a stinging quiet. “Who we are should have taken us away from _us_ ,” she says, “if that at all makes the slightest bit of sense. Do not ask me to be responsible for robbing you of your own life, Cullen Rutherford. The Order is dead, and what oaths you owed to them, they are dead too. And, as you have reminded me before: your sword is mine.”

“Yours,” Cullen repeats, as if he is not slowly drowning in a mix of tenderness and blood. “Though perhaps it is foolish of me.” He laughs. “I don't care if it is.”

It has been a long, long time since Mirèio has had a conversation this surreal. “Foolish?” she says, voice rolled out flat. 

“You are a protector in your own right,” Cullen fills in, red creeping back into his cheeks. “What need have your for me, in that regard?” He blows out a ragged sigh, catching the corner of her eye with his own. This time, he holds up well. 

Mirèio stills, a puzzled look rising up in her narrowed eyes. “Who found me in the snow, joli? Who found me on the battlements? Who spent the entirety of Halamshiral's evening concerned for my safety? Who told me 'I would prefer you need not sully yourselves at all?'”

“Ah,” Cullen breathes, stuffed to the eyeballs with the tender sting of joy. He wants to take her hand, trace along the forked blue vein under her skin. “I had not – I had not thought of it in that manner. It is good to be of use,” he frowns, as if he is tasting something bad, but is unsure of its source.

“Of use?” she snorts. “No joli, this isn't about use. The only thing I require from you as Commander is that you live, that you walk upright, and with honour. You have done nothing but that since the day I met you, no matter the bitterness of our early association. You have never crossed the line I drew for my mages. You have never set foot in their tower. Nor have your men, or your templars.” 

“Now who makes it sound as if I am two separate men?” Cullen laughs: a hoarse, sharp bark. “Should I not be three then?” 

Mirèio closes the little distance between them, not touching but near to. “Do you mean as a lover, joli?” And just like that, the silver flows back into her grin, pressed so near he can taste the apple on her breath, as before in that white yard. On that first day.

Tongue soft behind her teeth, she says, “All that I require from you is, as always, only what you wish to give. I swear to you, Cullen, so long as I can I will see you keep what matters most to you. As I will do for myself.”

It's not tears, just more water. More old aches, and well-worn, over-examined fears. A decade's worth, and all of it knotted into his fibres, into everything he is, or was, or might have been. He can't quite take it all apart yet. Doesn't have a sharp enough knife, though he's had enough practice skinning things that he should know how to do it even in the dark. 

“I am not sure I deserve that, Mirèio,” he finishes lamely.

She gets softer, quieter, magic pulling in like the salt-thick thud of the sea. “Perhaps we should have met sooner, joli.” 

Cullen laughs, drags his hands down over his eyes. 

“At least then you could have seen how much of a mess I was those first few years. It's not – ” Struggling, she raps her knuckles against his plackart. “It's not about what we deserve. It's about what we're given. What we choose to accept. I had my cousin, my family. I was never alone long. Who did you have, joli?”

Cullen shakes his head, the needle of his grief piercing through his throat, red thread pulling, pulling. “I was only in Greenfell a little while. The Sisters there,” he breathes, clearing his throat, “I was not given much time.”

“Then take what Cassandra is offering you, Cullen. Take what I am offering you. Dorian too,” she chuckles. “You have time. And friends. You have me.”

“You know, Dorian said much the same to me not two hours ago.”

“Did he?” Mirèio replies. “Smart man, our altus Pavus.” 

Cullen laughs, a soft sound fed into the velvet of Mirèio's mouth as she kisses him soundly. He melts into her, into her heat; the iron bite of her fingers; the hissing star in her palm; the oranges and bitter herbs laid in drops along her neck like pearls. Pulling away a little, he looks up, hungry for the way the heavy noonday light gentles her eyes, and the uncomplicated grace of her face above his. 

Perhaps this is the only way: to die and to rise, to rise again and again, until he is something better than he was before. Perhaps there will never be a day, a morning, where he wakes and feels himself to be the man he'd thought to be. 

Perhaps that is not for him to decide. 

The wind returns, rattling the narrow window, the wicks of his little yellow candles bending, throwing wide shadows up over the walls. The shadows dance for a moment, and they are not unfriendly. Only shapes brushed softly over stone. His shape, and hers.

“Mirèio.” Cullen breathes out, tasting the honey of her name not for the first time, not for the last, but for the wonder of it. For the truth of it: a thing that should not be, but is. 

Her eyes stay closed. Cullen watches her, all the hard lines of her face moulded to softness by the light above their heads. 

“I'll take my leave now,” she replies, “don't worry.” 

“I'm not,” he laughs, wincing as the sound jostles him, the tender base of his skull, “worried, that is. I – ” He is loathe to let her go, but his head is ready to split in two, not just with her words, or his, but with the dim echoes of the old song; the ache of being half what he used to be. 

“Tell me you have something for the pain?”

To say that he is stupidly grateful would be stupidly understated. “Yes, I – by the,” he waves up to the ladder, “by the books nearest the ivy.”

“The ivy?” Mirèio asks. “Is my castle so tumbled down you keep plants for bedmates?”

“You are no plant.” 

Mirèio blinks. And then she snorts. And then she laughs. The sound wells up, waxing gravel bright until it seems to touch the rafters, echoing. 

Cullen pinches the bridge of his nose, as Mirèio claps once, twice. Covering his own mouth to keep his undignified snorting quiet enough to hide under her laughter, Cullen sputters, “Maker, I'm sorry.”

“I'm not.” Mirèio's teeth flash, bright and sharp between the silver curl of her mouth. “That was wonderfully executed. Absolutely terrible, but also wonderful.”

“Please don't tell Varric.”

“Never,” Mirèio replies, drifting away to haul herself up the ladder.

Cresting the top of the ladder, she pauses a moment to steady her beating heart, to breathe out a grateful breath. 

Cullen's little nest is not what she had expected, and yet just as she had expected. 

She hasn't spent much time in his bedroom, none at all in fact. There is a bed, of course, low and wide, draped with fur and soaked in sunlight. Above it are burning leaves clinging to low branches stubbornly poking between crumbling stone. Two chests along the far wall; a little table and a cluster of stubby white candles, their wax spilled and puddled in artful ruin along the dark wood. A cloudy mirror and a wash basin; a stool and boots. Under the wood and the cold, there is elderflower and oakmoss: a salve in a jar, hiding behind a stack of spine-broken books.

_For aching joints._ Ten and six summers old, in her own crumbling tower nest, a green swatch of herbs held down by her hand, a silver blade and the sharp snick of metal against young, tender shoots. _Oakmoss to ward against infections and dull headaches._

So that is how he is treating himself.

Books to soothe his mind; herbs to soothe his body.

Candles to make the dark bearable. 

A place to rest that smells clean but not overly perfumed at all, just like any other bed chamber in Skyhold, and Mirèio realizes what the root of this uncanny feeling unfurling like a climbing vine in the hollow of her stomach is, even as it winds through her ribcage where she stands: this is the makeshift home of a man who has bent down and repaved the course of his own life.

Picking up the salve, she goes back down the ladder a little clearer. A litter muddier. Better for having gone up, for having seen – without him beside her – the shape of his quiet hours; the shape of his nights when he is not in her bed.

That it was not an unhappy sight means more to her than she has time to understand. Reaching the last rung, she steps off and moves back towards the bars of heavy, noonday light. Cullen has sunk back into a blot of sunlight, banding himself in heat, in those summer colours she loves so well. Gently, she sets the little jar down on the desk, and turns to go.

To linger would be too much. 

“Mirèio,” she hears behind her, and not for the first time, she wonders why her name sounds like something he tastes in his mouth. 

“Sí joli?”

“What does it mean?” _That little cup of love I cannot call love?_

“Joli?”

“Yes.” Cullen smiles, holding the jar in his hands, caught in a scimitar of light. 

“Fairest,” she says, mouth turning crooked, sharp. “The most fair. Most beautiful.” 

The word hanging on the tip of his tongue is _ridiculous_ but he swallows it down just as quick. Before it has a chance to ruin the flush on his cheeks and the tender, fragile smile on her face. 

“The most fair.”

Cullen laughs, ducks his head to hide the water clouding his eyes. “You.” He shakes his head. “How can you?”

“I speak the truth, joli,” Mirèio says, the red of her mouth stark and tender and too much, all in the same space, “my truth. Come find me when you are ready, Cullen. Close the door, and come find me.”

She is gone before he has enough sense in his head to reply.

The door she leaves open, her words echoing in a new, naked silence.

~ * ~

A numb sort of buzzing fills his chest, and Cullen has to sit or either end up slumped against the wall like an exhausted child; he doubts his bones are strong enough to get him back up if he does. Thirty odd pounds of steel plate will do that; absent lyrium will make it worse.

“You know what you are doing,” he says to his new and naked silence. “Don't pretend you do not.” To believe certain truths in the lock and key of his mind is not the same as hearing these truths spoken aloud. There are worlds between the two. One you may say is the pretty wishing of a lonely mind, and the other is living, breathing reality. Something real enough to be broken. To be lost. 

To hear, under a waking sun, that she trusts him? Believes in him? Believes in him enough to give him her time, her patience, her regard? To ask for these things in the heat of bodies and needs is not the same to ask for these things in the realm of the heart. He knows that. 

And after the ugliness of the war-room, to be given those things even after he stumbled? 

Time is precious. Kirkwall taught him that. 

But to ask for more? To ask for hers, when all Thedas demands so much already?

Perhaps he doesn't deserve to ask. Or, if not deserves, perhaps it is that he shouldn't ask.

Or perhaps he does deserve to ask, and this is another trick of made out of ten years worth of rage and loneliness and jumping at shadows. 

Maybe that's what is keeping him here, in his tumbled down tower, in this moment of being that he hates, and wants done with forever. 

Can he close the door on this? On Kirkwall, and Meredith, and Kinloch? He doesn't want to forget the faces, the mages, all the ones he'd failed. No – no, not forget. Make peace with. Close the door and say: I have done this. I will not do this again. This is mine, and I cannot change it. But I can be better. Try. 

Maybe it is the _only_ way.

He isn't good at this. Never has been. Greenfell had felt like a dream, a sort of gentler death he had been pulled from by a rude hand, before he could know true rest.

And then Kirkwall, and all its stink and screaming.

But that does not excuse him. It never has. He should have known better. Should have had a better hold on his own tongue. Simply because he has learned to ignore his own fear does not mean he has learned to manage it, or that it is gone. 

And he wants it gone. It is the only way forward. He wants to say to himself: _you have known this for a long time. Why did you fail when it mattered? At your first chance to prove it?_

Is it as she said? That he cannot see how far he has come? 

Perhaps that's not for him to know. Only to do. To be, as she said. For himself. In his own right. But also, if he is to tell himself no more lies, for her as well. For the future he has never had cause to think on beyond living to see the next day, the next draught.

But now? Now he is a stranger in his own life, the owner of a heart that lives, truly. A heart that beats like any other might, and not to the crooning of a handful of dust. A heart that feels as foreign in his chest as the idle, secretive dreams of his future. 

And he cannot blame that on the lyrium. The blue took his tongue, his skin. What memories, what small moments it took with it, he will never know. 

But this heart, this new shape, is all his own. He stares down as if he has the muscle in his hands: a tender fruit, fresh as if he'd only just dug his thumbnail in and peeled. As if he still had the thick, white pith in his hands, the tips of his fingers stained purple-red for all his digging.

Cullen cannot help but wonder, if he were to reach in now and pull the beating muscle out, if in his hands he would find it a newer, brighter red. Not that dark, bruise-coloured mass he'd felt it to be not so many years ago.

“Do I know what I want?” he asks the air, the ghosts. “Do I have a right to want it?” If he holds onto the guilt, to his immeasurable failures, will that make him better? Or will it leave him here, sitting at his desk and wondering?

Perhaps Mirèio is right. It is alright to be afraid. This specific fear. This place, this possibility that he has never known, this _might one day be_ that is more terrifying, and yet more wonderful than anything he has ever known. 

This here. These little things: her hand in his, his body beside hers, in all the mornings the world will give to them, if they are brave enough to try. 

To be afraid of the future means he has a future to lose. 

He has never had that before.

The realization bends his neck. He puts his head between the neat stacks of his papers, and laughs, feeling winded. Stricken. The sound echoes, swamping back into his ears with a hollow sort of sharpness. This feels like Halamshiral, when he had been like that bell freshly struck, ringing. Groping blindly, Cullen reaches down and pulls his neat collection of errant thoughts out into the light.

The first page is a mess of blots and crossed out lines: his frustrations with the slippery, fox-clever nature of Northern Marcher writ large and stark agains the rough paper. He rifles through the pages until he gets to the least messy one. He's been working on this one for weeks, and his soldier's hands have softened the rough page a little, just at the edges.

So much of the last year is here, in these cramped lines and meandering thoughts. So much of what he hasn't had the guts, or the tongue, to say aloud.

He's not good with words. They have never been his friends. 

Perhaps he should put this in her hands. Simply turn it over and let her read him whole, as she does when he looks too long at her face. Without the muddy stubbornness of his tongue. 

Would it help? 

A polite cough from the doorway yanks him rudely into the now, and Cullen slaps the folio shut. 

“Commander Rutherford, I have those requisitions from the preliminary scouting teams in the Western Approach.”

“Thank you, Orsha,” Cullen murmurs, gesturing for the aid to enter. The young Fereldan has a neat bundle of papers in one hand, and a tin in the other. 

“Begging your pardon, Commander, but the tin is from Lady Montilyet.” 

Cullen frowns, staring at the innocuous tin. “What is it for?”

“Ah,” the aide continues, “Lady Montilyet said you would understand.”

“Of course.” Waving Orsha forward, he reaches out to take the tin. It is not large, but it rattles softly. No note has been provided.

“Ser, there is also,” the aide hesitates, fingers ticking through the bound stack of papers in her hand, “there is also a note from Grand Enchanter Fiona.”

“Oh?” He does not intend to have his voice waver so, but for a moment it is hard to work past the ice blooming in his gut. 

“A list of Enchanters, ser, from Lady Fiona. She said she hopes you will be able to attend next time, your schedule permitting it, of course.”

“I – thank your for informing me, Orsha. If you happen to pass through the mage tower, please convey my thanks to Lady Fiona. Assure her I will be in attendance next time.”

Orsha's salutes crisply, and disappears the way she came; Cullen slips the folio back into his desk and searches out the list of names. In neat, fine done cursive, he finds 'for the next occasion' written at the top, and a list of fifteen names below. 

More than a handful. And all willing? He can scarcely believe it, despite the evidence in his hands. Perhaps this will go easier. Or it will not, and this is just the least, the most uncomplicated moment, before it all spirals into something else. 

But no, he is getting ahead of himself, inventing disasters that haven't yet occurred. 

Perhaps that is also one of his problems: inventing ruin that needn't been real. That would never have been real, had he not fed it so diligently. 

But work calls. Time is short, the sun already on its way to tumbling down between Skyhold's needle teeth. He only has a handful of hours until the dinner bell is rung, and he must go out and make small talk with people – no, with his _friends_ until it is appropriate to slink back to his tower. 

Besides that, he must speak with Rylen. See how matters went with the mages. Think on what to do next. 

There is always that: what comes next. 

He only hopes he is brave enough to meet it, no matter what that next might be. No matter what it demands of him. No matter what he demands of himself. 

But there's a little time yet left to him for sweeter things.

Reaching back into the drawer, he pulls out a red leather book; strokes its creased and broken spine as if he can, by touch, coax into opening up. If he touches just right, it will spill its tender secrets to him; whisper to him, all the words she knows for love, for trust, for that moment when the sun strikes the sparrow's wing, and that arrow called love cleaves its little breastbone in two.

Perhaps if he knows her language, her magic, he will know her better; know her wholly. 

That is what he hopes.

When he is done reading the stanzas of the trobaritz's canso, he reaches for the tin and finds a pile of golden shortbreads dusted in sweet cinnamon.

This time he does cry. And it still hurts, as it did before. But it is good. 

This time, it is good.

~ * ~

Her gloves are on her workbench, empty fingers curling up against a dusty flask, a bit of reagent dirtying the bottom like a slice of unwashed moon. 

The smell of green leaves fatted on water and sunlight crawls up her body to nestle into the empty spaces between her ribs. _Home_ is the thought that rises up, desolate, singular, and sweeter than it has any right to be. _Home_ because it is not home. But it is the closest, the smallest fragment – a meagre comfort transformed into a mighty fortress. And like any bird seeking shelter, she flies to it with ease. And she does fly. Until the door seals shut and all there is, is the sound of distant rain, and the susurus of leaves, the gentle harmonics of runes sinking into good earth.

She breathes deep, and just like that she walks back, back to Montjuïc and her gently crumbling tower garden, her green room full of green and growing things, all her little trinkets strung on silk-thread strings, chiming in the breeze, catching the light and her eyes as the day moves slowly down the mountainside. She would give nearly anything to look out a window, any window, and know that just below it, Arnau and Lorenç went about their business. Were waiting for her. Could call for her at any moment.

She's been gone too long, and no transplanted greenscape will bring her close enough to catch the wind, and take her home.

_You cannot think about this. Not now, not after..._

She laughs, to herself, the echo washing over her head: the littlest waves.

There are seedlings to organize, herbs to catalogue, some destined for Adan and some promised to Nilin and her apprentices in their newly built clinic. Fiona will want to speak with her, and there are classes to organize – young magelings who will need to be counselled against running off and joining the standing army. And the men. The soldiers. Cullen's men cannot be made ready for the minor siege that the Emprise will bring them so quickly.

Fifteen mages. They are all Circle-raised. None like her. The Hinterlands and her wide grass sea took care of that. A place like that is good for two things: farming, and hunting. Running. Not hiding. So few true hedge-mages remained after the collapse of the Circles. Either they died first, being the least beaten down by the templars, and so the first to be targeted for execution, or they fled. Ran back out into the woods, never to return to the world that caged them in the first place. 

She folds the parchment up, and gets back to work.

_You have time. Two weeks at most._

Digging her fingers in, the dirt gives way, soft and only a little damp – just right for the crystal grace and royal elfroot that must be planted tomorrow. 

_Sort yourself. You are no good like this. Your sword is no good like this. You can attend to this later, when things are quieter._ It's not Arnau's voice, or Lorenç's – they would scold her for this, for trying to drag this stone along all by herself. It's only her own voice. Her worries; her grief. 

“Amicus?” His knock is perfunctory. The evening wind carries his voice in far, past the rustling leaves and the cycling rain. “I have our rune inlays drafted, if you have a moment to review them with me.”

Mirèio stands easily, a little sigh tucked away just under her tongue. She wipes her hands on her breeches, black dirt clinging softly, it's fragrance eating up the churning in her gut. “Of course, cariñu.” something like a smile touches the edge of her mouth. “I was wondering when you'd stop by.”

“I would have come earlier but I had a run in with that strapping templar of yours.”

The shock in her eyes surprises them both. “Are you alright?”

“Dearest,” Dorian scolds, covering over his shock with a flourish of rustling parchment, “please don't assume what I know you are assuming.”

Her body goes concave; she laughs. “Shit.” Pinching the bridge of her nose, she curses again. “Forgive me, I –”

“No, none of that.”

She laughs again, extending a hand to take the neatly rolled parchment from Dorian. “What happened, cariñu?”

Dorian breezes past her, making haste to settle into the nearest klinē, careful not to get his dirty boots on the fine, plum coloured canvas. “I do so admire that you've managed to bring these,” he pats a cluster of carved grapes. “Such a long way from home. I never would have thought Marchers cared for tevinter furnishings.”

Mirèio joins him, sinking onto her own couch with a sigh. “You have never been to Ostwick, have you?”

“No,” Dorian smiles. Reaching down, he opens the wicker basket beneath the little table shared between them and claps, a sly grin curling the tips of his moustache. “Ah, Mirèio, I knew you would have something appropriate.”

“I wasn't raised in a barn, Dorian.”

Dorian gives her an arch look, face a neat cup for his sparking delight. He pats the couch's exquisitely carved vines. “Why does Ostwick fancy tevinter klinai?”

“Less expensive than the Rivaini version. And we don't have to import them by sea. Don't forget what happened after the battle of Temerin.”

“Oh,” Dorian chuckles, “yes, well, wars for independence will do that. Ever so practical, that melting pot port city of yours. Is Ostwick particularly ostentatious?”

There's a miserable sort of softness on her face; a sorry longing. He must see it, because instead of patting the little fawn's nose, he pats her hand instead. “Yes and no. It's a curious blend I suppose, being so far north. Part Marcher, part Antivan, part Tevinter. We were a slave port for a little while. Though never like Kirkwall.”

“That's good.” The wine is dark, like the flesh of a summer cherry split in two. It fills the air with a dry, sugary scent – the first blush of a heady, sunstung summer. “So is this,” he murmurs, taking a delicate sip. 

“Apparently you're not the only one who enjoys stealing from La Lionne d'Orlais.”

Dorian chokes a little, sputtering into the silver belly of his cup. “You did not!”

“She had a vault of the stuff!” Mirèio exclaims through her grinning, and her laughing. 

“Such a terrible example you're setting, Your Worship.”

“Please,” Mirèio frowns, “one can only hope.”

Dorian quiets in the same breath she does.

“What happened?”

“I'm not possessed of a delicate touch, Mirèio.” 

Mirèio snorts. “You are better than most, cariñu.”

He doesn't quite know what to say to that, other than _thank you_. It's an odd thing, to be believed in. “Regardless, I asked him about Hawke, about their little pissing contest.”

“Shit.” The dirt on her knuckles is profoundly interesting for a minute or two. “Ah, Maker's shitting, fucking holy Throne. I hadn't thought anyone else knew of that.”

“Yes,” Dorian grimaces. “Drink.”

Mirèio drinks.

“I also attempted,” he laughs, “and I do mean attempted, to – er – remind our darling brute that there are other ways of living in this world. That he should perhaps try a little harder to think about that.”

“What?” The wine in her belly isn't anywhere near enough to have her blood so heated, but her face is hot, the breath in her mouth is hot. “Oh Dorian,” she grieves, leaning forward to put her face in her hands. She laughs, the noise muffled by her dirty hands. “What would I do without you?”

“You'd be alright.”

The refusal is simple, already out of her mouth and flying on its own. “I doubt that.”

Smiling, he taps the ivory point of his nail against the table's little, inlaid abalone – a staccato tink tink tink that Mirèio reads loud and clear. She puts her cup down, and Dorian fills it back up, more of that curious, redolent fragrance sharpening the air. 

“You know,” Dorian starts, cautious as a tottering lamb on too-new legs, “I thought I would get used to southerners, the more time I spent in their company. But even with the mages, it is hard. There is so much I take for granted. So much I think as simple as breathing.”

“Ha!” Mirèio snorts. “That is an understatement.”

“Mostly, I think it is hard to live with people who see you as strange. But it is also a good thing, I think, in a way.”

Mirèio looks up from the bruise-coloured seascape in her cup. “Oh? And why is that, cariñu?” 

Taking a long pull from his own cup, Dorian sighs, the sound rustling the intricate, fragile silence between them. “It reminds us that we have a great deal to be thankful for. And also a great deal to learn, and to teach others.”

“So wise,” Mirèio grins, though it is bitter. “Don't tell me your interlude with Cullen brought this out.”

“No,” Dorian replies. “The Bull and I have been, conversing. Heatedly.”

“About?” Her mouth is wicked sharp. 

“The Qun. The magisterium. All those lovely internal division that keep our people cruel, or shackled, and mostly useless.”

“And how is that going?”

The light seeping in through the glass touches him with the same sort of soporific heat as it did in Minrathous' own botanical laboratories. He finds it disconcerting. “About as well as I imagine your own arguments with Cullen go.”

Mirèio laughs. Dorian's face is an open book, a nervous sea of bubbling questions, reaching out for her own. Sighing, she says, “If I tell you my stumbling block, will you share yours?”

“Yes,” Dorian breathes, a sliver of laughter brightening his face like a little star rising up out of a troubled horizon.

Frowning down into her wine, her own face stares back at her, dark-eyed, sharpened by worries she can't name, or tame. “I haven't had long to sort this out, so if I do not express myself well, forgive me.”

Dorian scoffs, reaches for the wine. Shaking the bottle experimentally, he frowns. “Will we need more wine?”

“I hope not,” Mirèio huffs, laughter hiding in the lines around her eyes.

“He's soft, you know,” she blurts out, shocked by her own sudden candor.

“Soft?” Dorian replies, the word floating gentle as a butterfly between them.

“Yes. Or, perhaps what I mean is that he wants to be soft, more than anything.” Frowning hard, she swallows down the little burs in her throat, the ones that sting, and taste like tears. “And I'm not – I think perhaps he doesn't know how to be. The life he has lived has done him as great an injustice as he has done to others. And I don't know how to reconcile that.”

“Mirèio,” Dorian soothes, “I thought – from the beginning...”

“I think I misjudged how deeply he'd been hurt. How much he is struggling not just with who he is now, but with who he was – and who he wants to be.”

“Ah.” Wine forgotten, Dorian curls the edges of his moustache, caught up in the strange, dislocating sensation of two lives running parallel. Two problems with similar questions. “I must confess I think our problems are much the same. For different reasons of course.”

“It's not easy is it? Trying to be better? Trying to learn if you can,” Dorian struggles, hands fluttering like nervous birds, “take in all that was, and decide if that doesn't outweigh what might be.”

“Fuck.” Mirèio laughs, a bleak, plaintive note. “Yes. Very much so, Dorian. Only, let's not pretend, my friend: what the Bull did is not at all the same as what Cullen did.”

“No,” Dorian agrees. “But the man's had his share of civilians unfairly dead at his hands. Tal-vashoth too. A pesky symptom of living and breathing someone else's beliefs.”

Mirèio fills up their cups this time, the last of the wine shared out between them. “I have Antivan brandy, if we need it.”

Dorian laughs, head thrown back, roaring. “Do you think it is worth it?” he says, a little more quietly. 

“The brandy?”

“No,” Dorian says, “not the brandy.”

Kind of him, to so unceremoniously dump her fear out onto the table as if it is nothing more than a wayward parcel of letters. But the answer is there, comes to her with a crushing sense of finality. For a minute or two, she struggles to breathe. “I'm a stubborn, prideful fool, you know,” she mourns, only it isn't mourning, but something sharper, hardier than that. Acceptance? Understanding? 

Dorian grins, raising his silver cup to clink its rim against hers. “Bene vobis!” he cheers. “That is why I love you. One and the same, you and I, my friend.”

“I don't want to give up yet, Dorian.”

“That's a relief,” he breathes. “Neither do I.”

“Why?” she smiles, a coy little grin over the rim of her glass.

“Because he's soft. Or at least I believe he wants to be.”

“Maker,” Mirèio groans, “open these charts before either of us make fools of ourselves. I don't have enough handkerchiefs for that. Brandy yes, good cotton, no.” 

“Agreed,” Dorian replies, breathing out as if he is slowly leaking. 

The brandy comes out anyway, two fingers each poured into delicate little cups of coloured glass. Dorian spreads their work out and they argue over harmonics, how best to weave complimentary spell work like a tapestry worker considers thread. The sun sinks lower and lower, the witch lights rustle to life, gilding the green and the mages in a warm, forgiving honey-and-marmalade glow. 

They breathe easier, listening for the musical hum that signals approaching rain; the whisper of silver rings clicking into place, runes shivering into their familiar, complex harmony woven by their own hands.

A harmony that spreads out to touch minds, and steady hearts, even to the earth beneath their feet.

Peace, or at least a solid approximation of the same. 

~ * ~

Evening falls gently, the orange yolk of the sun slipping down between Skyhold's white teeth in a bloody clash of pink and red. Cullen watches from his tower window, and decides. 

Rising up from his desk, he stacks his papers into their appropriate positions for Scout Moro, who is always the first into his office come the first blush of dawn. He eases his folio back into its soft, time-worn leather slip before placing it back into the drawer and locking it. The click of the key makes it seem as if he is coming back out into the world slowly, deliberately. 

Folding up the sheaf of parchment and tucking it into his pocket, he goes out of the tower quietly. 

He closes the door behind him.

The stretch of stones from his door to the rotunda is short, but long enough for him to steady his breathing. It does nothing to gentle the thing that beats heavy in his chest, as if his bones are a poor cage for its striving muscle. Objectively, he knows it's only his heart. But it feels an animal to him, more than willing to smash itself to pieces for a moment of freedom.

He passes through the rotunda like a ghost. Solas says nothing of Cullen's intrusion, his single witch light casting his delicate frescos into ghoulish shadows, titans striding across the walls as he passes through their shapes in silence. The great hall is similarly empty, echoing like the belly of a dragon as the wind passes through its bare ribs. The young night has turned Skyhold into a beguiling forest, and he moves through it with a cautious step, aware of every liquid shadow, every puddle of milk-white moonlight. 

He's not afraid of being seen per-se, but privacy is something he craves. Something he would like to give to Mirèio as well. Peace and quiet seems to be something neither of them has coin enough to afford. 

By the time he reaches the bottom of the stairs, his heart has twisted itself into hammering on the white of his ribs. The brisk wind does nothing to cool the hot blood in his veins, or settle the nervous roiling in his gut. It's not quite like that night in the woods, before Hawke came crashing through the metaphorical thicket to ruin the little seedlings Cullen had only just planted, but it is similar enough to set him worrying.

It's those seedlings that matter most. The ones he'd taken from her hands under the light of her odd, lace-winged sparrowlarks. He owes her a chance to see if something good will grow from that. He owes himself the same; wants it more than anything. 

Mirèio deserves to know this. More than that, he wants to tell her. To see her whole, true to herself in a way he has never been true with himself. 

Moving down the stairs, he finds Skyhold's inner courtyard is empty, utterly: a quieted heart he moves through with a singular focus, his boots making little noise through the young, tender grass. The trees reach up high before him, their bare, newly budded branches sifting the moonlight that falls hard and heavy against the earth. He feels as if he is swimming through this place, through the night and its familiar, turned-strange landscape, until Mirèio's green-glass construct rises up out of the dark like a bobbing lantern; a little, butter-yellow light calling him to rest. 

By the time he is at the door, his heart is roaring in his ears, the blood in his body beating like an inland sea against the thin tissue of his skin, as if he will dissolve into foam if he stands still for a minute more. 

The door opens with a whisper; the smell of green comes out to greet him, sifting through the anxiety he can taste in his mouth like old copper pennies. 

Inside, it is a quiet as ever, the distant muttering of rain the only noise left to him besides the mess of his own breathing. The rest of himself – the copper taste in his mouth, the shivering muscle in his chest; the inland sea under his skin – he doesn't quite know what to do with.

He doesn't know how to be. How to put something else on after all that nakedness. 

The path through the soughing trees seems a little wider, but no less wild. He starts walking, mindful of the roots, and the little stones. He hasn't been here since before they left for Halamshiral, and it almost feels like another life. Another time. It's nonsense, but he can't quite get the thought out of his head. 

Hawke has divided time – Skyhold itself – sharply, and Cullen is still reeling. 

He still doesn't know what to make of it – the craving, the way his soft skull threatened to split apart and turn him inside out, the tears. What he does know is this: his old, shattered lyrium kit – he'd swept that up, picked out the little hinges and the ivory slit of Andraste's eye, and dumped the rest out the window. 

Let the wood scraps make friends with the lost lyrium, for all he cares. 

The air, so like summer, is heavy on his skin. He walks quietly down the narrow dirt path until heavy branches thin out and he stops, the tips of his boots piercing the centre of this green, swaying sea.

She is there, her back to him, like the first time.

Unlike the first time, he's empty-handed. “Mirèio.”

She turns, and the light catches on the bare curve of her shoulder. Cullen stills, blinking. She's bare from the waist up, wearing a pair of inky, swirling rivaini breeches that gather in a cuff around her ankles. Bootless.

For some reason, he finds the sight of her bare feet absurd; tender. 

“I should have sandals made for you,” Mirèio sighs. “Walking in gardens in boots is no fun at all.”

Cullen laughs before he thinks better of it, eyes still fixed on her shoulder, and the fall of her braids. He says her name again; her quiet smile warring with the pounding sea in him. 

“I – ” 

“I know you want to talk, joli.”

Cullen return her smile with one of his own, though it feels fragile on his face. 

“Cullen...” He feels the light trembling on his shoulders; her hands; her trees.

“What we talked of – all of it, Mirèio I – Maker, you've known who you are for a long time and I – I don't. I'm not sure I know how to...be, in all this.” He frowns, struggling with his own tongue. “But I do not want you to go back to hiding. I don't want that for either of us.” The failing sunlight gentles the lines of her face, makes her strange. Cullen cannot help but laugh. It is either that or ache.

“Cullen,” she says, as if that is answer enough for them both. She covers the meagre distance between them slowly. Only Cullen is already moving, and then they are practically toe to toe, copper dust rising up under the rush of their feet.

Instinct. That his the only way he can describe it – this has become instinct. She draws close, her shadow falling over his face, and he closes his eyes, slides into a quiet, ruddy dark, and lifts his chin up. Brings her his lips. 

She kisses him the way she had when they were first learning to trust one another: in careful, tasting darts. But now it is not just that tasting, that bite. She kisses him as if she believes that she is opening up a space into which rushes love; quiet; acceptance.

And oh his body, speechless, sings: the song, sweeter than the blue.

He stays like that for a tiny eternity, lingering in the dark, in the heat of her breath touching his cheeks softly. In the tingling of his lips. Wandering through a hole in his own chest that is slowly filling up with a crippling sense of peace, an enormous, nameless _wonder_.

He could lay down now, and never come back up again. So long as she laid down beside him, her body slotted against his like a silver spoon.

“I – there's so much, Mirèio.”

“I know,” she laughs, a gentle puff of air against his pinking cheeks.

Cullen opens his eyes, finds her grey eyes and the bow of her mouth. The rush to speak leaves him abruptly. Her smile has punctured him, made him dumb to everything but the way his body touches hers. “Mirèio, I – ”

“I know, Cullen. I understand.” The strings of her voice are tight, the sickle of her mouth sharp and loving. Stepping away with a neat flourish, she circles Cullen once, twice, the tips of her fingers skimming the air.

“My Lady?” he laughs, puzzled.

“I have nothing set for the morning, joli. And neither do you.”

Cullen laughs, feeling a little winded. “Says who?” 

“I do, of course. Come,” she laughs, making a little bow, “dance with me.”

“Mirèio?” The lights tremble above his head, tangling in the velvet-shadowed branches. 

He reaches out, takes her hand. Her skin is warm, a little gritty with dirt; there's no music, only the tinkling lights. But then something slips between reality's threads like a needle working through the teeth of a loom, and her birds rise up, a wistful music bubbling out of their lacy throats.

Cullen looks up. “Is that – are there words?” 

“Yes.”

“And?” Her grip is a gentle cage, a tether easily broken. 

“It's an old Rivaini – it's not quite a song, but that's the best word I have.” Mirèio smiles. “It's not meant for here.” The memory that flows in on the tide of wings above her head is a fruit she digs into with relish. A sweetness that cannot be made again. Only remembered. 

Cullen sifts through his words, searching. “Is it magic? An incantation?”

Mirèio taps her bare foot against Cullen's boot. “Not with your boots on, joli.”

Cullen frowns

“And yes, in a manner of speaking, it is an incantation. But this dirt would not listen, and it is not mine to sing. This is just a ghost. A reminder.”

“Of what?” Cullen breathes out, reaching down to pry his boots off. The dirt is warm against his skin, powdery between his toes. 

“Wonder,” Mirèio replies. “Happiness. Freedom.”

_I should wonder how you are satisfied with the south._

 _I am not._

Cullen rises back up. Now he feels it: the faintest rune-song tickling at the soles of his feet. A preternatural shiver that runs like water from his soft instep to the base of his skull. It's not a terrible sensation; doesn't send his heart into his mouth, or back to that cage. 

The rune-song rests against his skin, he allows it to, and he lives with it. 

“Strange,” he laughs, “but I never noticed...” Mirèio looks at him archly, caught in the middle of drawing him against her.

“What didn't you notice?” 

He looks up into her face, and then back down to his toes, and the dirt between them. “The runes, you can feel them in the earth.”

Mirèio wears her shock prettily, for a moment. And then she laughs: a flash of toothy joy. “Aye, joli, there is harmony in everything. It all sings, down to the stones, the earth. Everything.” Sobering, she says, “I forgot you could feel magic still. I thought perhaps there wouldn't be – I should have known that.”

“There may always be some left, Mirèio,” Cullen replies. “It's in my bones.” She makes a noise – a sharp, wounded snarl as if she hurts for his sake – and he is... He does not know what he is. Grateful? Apologetic for a pain that waits for them both? Too taken with the sharp edge of her mouth to care otherwise? 

“Did you close the door?” Mirèio says abruptly. 

Cullen startles, squeezes her hand too tight. “I – well yes, the greenhouse door is...”

“No,” she interrupts. “Did you close the door?”

Between the scant distance of their bodies, the air thickens, turns back on itself in a crackling silence.

Cullen decides. “Yes.”

“Then dance with me, joli.”

“I'm hardly the best dance partner, Mirèio.” There's a little space between them, just enough for her to step away and, smiling jackal-moon sly, offer him her hand with a flourish and a bow. 

“Ah, that hardly matters. Just move with me joli. You know how to do that,” she laughs, the tip of her tongue caught between her teeth.

Heat touches him, runs down the river of his spine to his toes. Foolish, that he still turns red at the sight of her knowing mouth, but he'd not have it any other way. “Tomorrow?” he blurts out, almost without a thought. He can't get the elegant hinge of her wrist out of his mind, the memory of her salt-water sigh in the dark above him.

Mirèio blinks, draws in a little breath, and sweeps Cullen up in a gale of laughter and movement. “Yes, joli. Tomorrow and tomorrow and for however many tomorrows we want together.”

He wants to say _all of them, every single one, Mirèio_ , but the world is made up of just her hand in his, her hand on his hip, the shiver of wind over his cheeks as they spin. So much green. So much of her. And him. Just moving. Dancing over the copper dirt.

As he breathes in their mingling dust, the future rises up nebulous; a shifting, tumbling spirit. His future, and hers; theirs – in the rhythm of their feet. 

He can't guess at what that future will be. Only hope. But it's hard to keep thoughts in his head as the world spins.

_I will not let my past destroy my future._

They're flowing quickly, his feet moving with a shocking grace. As if they are fighting, matching swords. 

_I will be better than that._

Behind him, above him, the birds rise up in a cloud of singing sea water. Thin, unreal wings brush his cheeks, their wind lifting his hair and hers. The trees move, dance with them, their branches swaying to the spiralling of their feet.

_More._

He's never moved like this before. Might as well be flying, caught up in the wild, quiet joy on Mirèio's face. The heat of her bare skin beneath his hands, the cage of her ribs under the spread of his fingers, the rush of her breath – there is nothing he does not love in this moment.

The shivering rune-song, he loves that too. 

He knows his eyes are bright and wet, but he can't care about that. Only this matters: their hands and their feet and the push-pull of their bodies, the mingling of their breath. 

Just this now, the whole world whittled down to two and an ocean of sparrowlarks.

They dance together until their breath runs too hot and little tongues of steam curl up from their skin, and the first pattering of rain comes in.

Mirèio grabs him tight, and they sag into each other, laughing, wheezing in and out to the drumming of their wildly beating hearts. Cullen doesn't want to be pulled back to that frozen valley, but memory drags him back there anyway. Back to seeing her silhouetted against the bowl of the horizon, all black and blue and beaten-down. But alive. Alive and brought back to them. 

To him.

He remembers, as before: _what grace have I earned to be here? To have this chance, again?_

The rain jolts them out of stillness, and Mirèio tugs him forward, away from the swirling dust and the sharpening scent of clean water. 

“I forgot to ask,” Cullen nearly wheezes out. “Why are you – where's your tunic?”

“Joli,” she laughs, shaking her head. Without a word, Mirèio tugs him along, moving ahead of the incoming rain. Cullen stumbles a little, feet painted in copper dirt, and then they are both tumbling into a cool, dry nest heaped with soft furs and a colour so familiar to him by now it is hard to recall that only a few would see it for what it is: Trevelyan yellow. Three small candles in the belly of a lantern their only light in the dark enclosure.

Her blanket.

He stills, heart-sore and winded and grateful and madly, stupidly, foolishly in love.

“In the mountains around Montjuïc, we slept in tents during lamb season, and shearing season. Arnau and I were so proud when we were finally trusted to be on our own, out of Uncle's space.” She blows out a soft breath that isn't quite a laugh or a sigh. “I know it's foolish...”

“No,” Cullen soothes, “tell me. No more hiding, Mirèio.”

With an indelicate snort, she says, “I suppose I wanted to go home for a little while. And this was the best I could manage.”

The plain grief in her voice squeezes Cullen's heart. He wonders why he's never seen this, why he's never asked. How could she not be homesick? “I – forgive me for not asking, before. I should have thought...”

“I'm not going to disappear in the night, joli. I'll be alright.”

“I'd rather you be happy,” Cullen says, a mulish frown on his face. 

“Ha!” Mirèio says, covering her mouth for a minute. “And you still wonder why I care for you. You are the only one who has ever asked. Ever wondered. Well, you and Dorian.”

Cullen groans, covering his smile with his hands. “The two of you, I swear. Are you sure you're not related?”

“We are!” Mirèio replies. “Distant cousins.”

Cullen makes a thoughtful noise, thoughts running back to Mirèio's words. “Am I really? Surely, I am not the only one.”

“It is very easy to be charming, joli. It costs me little. Most don't bother to look beyond that. But you, you were never satisfied with that. I could see it, in the way you looked at me.”

“Oh?” Cullen flushes, a nervous heat flooding into the pit of his stomach. Strange, to know she watched him as he watch her, in those early days.

“You always seemed to be looking past. At first I thought it was because you were a templar. I assumed you were one of those 'there's more to you than this, mage' sorts. But then I realized you wanted me to bend you over the war-table on the nearest opportunity – and that put an end to that particular worry.”

Cullen chokes, a wheezing sort of noise that matches his red face. She grins, and he doesn't know what to do with his hands, or his tongue. “And yet, I'm still waiting. How cruel of you, my Lady.”

“Is that a complaint, Ser Rutherford?”

“Not quite,” Cullen shivers. “But I am learning not to pretend I do not want things. I blame you.”

Mirèio stills, a terrible gentleness creeping over her face. “Ah, then I happily accept your blame, joli. Wanting something does not make you a lesser man, no matter what the damned Order taught you.”

Smiling, Cullen reaches out to lay his palm against Mirèio's cheek. Her skin is warm, rain-kissed, a bit of dirt clinging to one sharp cheekbone. He wipes it away slowly, studying the red of her mouth. “Mirèio...”

“In the morning, joli,” Mirèio whispers, leaning forward to kiss him, slow and sweet. 

Cullen opens up eagerly, no gentle nudge with the tip of her tongue needed. She kisses him like wine, as if she is tasting him, welcoming him in the curl of her tongue. Cullen makes a soft little sound that goes no further than the edge of his teeth. It's not hunger in her mouth but knowing. Lingering. 

Enjoyment. 

So strange, to be enjoyed.

Her tongue slides against his, the faintest trace of a smoky, wickedly strong brandy lingering in the heat. And then her teeth are nipping at his bottom lip, the little jolt of pain prickling over his skin, between his legs. “Mirèio, please.”

“Ah,” she pulls away, “in the morning, I promise,” and hands him her shining braids.

Her hair is cold in his hands, braids slick and tight, and precise. Until he finds the ends, and eases them apart with the edge of his nail. The neat pile of copper bands grows steadily as he works. The air in the tent is an odd mix of syrupy warmth and the cold reminder of the rain pattering above their heads. When he has to get to his knees to reach the top of her head, they both laugh.

Cullen hits a snare, just a little one, and curses softly, working apart the strands patiently.

“Don't worry,” Mirèio chuckles, “it doesn't need to be perfect. Besides...”

Cullen's hands still in her hair, his fingers curling against the warm curve of Mirèio's skull.

“One day you'll know it like you know your maps.”

_There will be other nights, joli,_ bubbles up, the memory tasting sweet in his mouth. “I – that is good to know, Mirèio.” Good to know that she counts this not in days but in something longer. Something measured in familiarity, and not time.

And then her hair is all undone and night has come in while he worked; the only light left is the candles. The rain is still drumming on the canvas above their heads, the rune-song whispering between the rustling slit in the tent. It feels almost as if they are at sea, or have somehow fallen out of the world, and into some other place, some hinterland not bound to Thedas, or the Inquisition, or the war. As if nothing could touch them here, unless it was each other they touched.

“Thank you,” Mirèio murmurs. Behind her, Cullen breathes out, a section of her hair still wrapped around his fist.

“No,” he shakes his head, “it's me who should be...”

The birds pipe up, out in the dark.

Mirèio rises up wordlessly, her hair slipping from Cullen's grasp, and goes out into the rain. He watches her go, her tall shape striding out to drag the birds to her like a fisher-king diving through waves. They don't fall, or break, only drift apart at her touch.

The silence is deafening, next to the rain. Cullen wants her to stop, to leave one. It seems wrong to dissolve them into nothingness – as if each had a heart, a right to life. 

He shakes his head, easing the unsteady smile off his face. Her birds aren't real, but they are beautiful. They are hers. 

“Mirèio,” Cullen says, catching sight of two grey irises, and the sword flash of her mouth.

“Yes?” Mirèio asks, running a hand down Cullen's side to fit around the curve of his hip.

“Leave one, please. And blow the candle out,” he murmurs, guiding Mirèio back into his open arms when she kneels down over the bed of furs to find him in the dark.

~ * ~

**Author's Note:**

> Chapter titles are taken from Thomas Wyatt's Whoso list to hunt.
> 
> That sonnet is essentially the inspiration for this fic.
> 
> Except Cullen is the hind.
> 
> And I'm a terrible person.


End file.
